Totalitarian Novels: Brave New World and Pleasure
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the power of pleasure to control a population before introducing Hillsdale College president Dr. Larry P. Arnn.
Totalitarian novels depict regimes that exert complete and pervasive control over the lives of their subjects. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Koestler, and C.S. Lewis imagine the terrible possibilities of unchecked modern tyranny. Join Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, and Hillsdale College students in this exploration of 1984, Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, and That Hideous Strength.
The course includes four lectures and four conversations, each about 30 minutes long. It is structured with one lecture about each book followed by a conversation between Dr. Arnn and the students about themes from that book.
The regime in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is dedicated to ease. The world state is maintained by attempting to fulfill all sensual human desires, thereby precluding any aspiration to nobility or virtue. John the Savage rebels against the banality of the society into which Mustapha Mond and Bernard Marx have dragged him.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. |
| 0:12.1 | I'm Jeremiah Regan and I'm joined by my friend, Juan Davos. |
| 0:15.4 | Welcome back, everybody. |
| 0:16.4 | We are on to lecture three of totalitarian novels, Brave New World Pleasure. And in contrast with |
| 0:23.8 | 1984, which was more on pain, actually as a theme. The regime uses fear and pain to gain loyalty. |
| 0:30.9 | That's right. Here we move on to pleasure. That's right. So Dr. Arne explains to us, |
| 0:35.3 | because this is a lecture from Dr. Arn where it gives us a plot summary and literary analysis. Unlike the regime in 1984, which is the boot stamping on the human face forever, the regime in Brave New World promises freedom from pain, freedom from fear, indulgence in every type of pleasure, every type of sensual delight, pleasure for the |
| 0:55.8 | eyes, ears, mouth, and other things. |
| 0:59.1 | And when we're reading this type of novels, what I like about studying totalitarianism |
| 1:03.6 | through novel, through narrative, is that you can kind of see elements of our own world |
| 1:08.8 | in the novels. |
| 1:10.3 | And obviously, in 1984, it's more Big Brother watching you and all the surveillance state and all that. |
| 1:15.9 | We're thinking about the NSA and the Patriot Act and stuff like that. |
| 1:18.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:19.2 | Here, you know, when you think of Soma, the drug that the regime uses to bring pleasure to everybody |
| 1:25.7 | and sort of mollify everybody's senses and in their thumos. |
| 1:30.8 | Keep them docile. Right. Think of dopamine and all of the ways in which our society now |
| 1:39.0 | through the phones, through TikTok and social media and TV and all the forms of entertainment. |
| 1:44.8 | Yeah, push for consumerism, which is a big theme in Brave New World. |
| 1:47.9 | Everybody needs to buy new things. |
| 1:49.2 | You don't repair or mend anything. |
| 1:50.6 | You throw it away and get the next one. |
... |
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