Episode 303: Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” Ch. 8-13

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This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Thomas, and Ella continue discussing Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. They begin engaging with the text today by talking more about satire and parody as elements in this story. While recapping the major plot points in these chapters, they go deeper into the character of John the Savage, the ways in which this story is like a distorted reflection of The Tempest and Othello, as well as so many other Shakespeare references. Come back again next week for our final episode in this series as we cover the final chapters of Brave New World!

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Don’t forget to check out this coming year’s annual Literary Life Online Conference, happening January 23-30, 2026, “The Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Quickeneth: Reading Like a Human”. Our speakers will be Dr. Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, Dr. Anne Phillips, and, of course, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks.

Commonplace Quotes:

What a series of rediscoveries life is. All the things which one use to regard as simply the nonsense grown-up talk have one by one come true–draughts, rheumatism, Christianity.

C. S. Lewis, from his letters

For this is the real difficulty with ignorance: in not being fine and good nor wise, one thinks oneself quite adequate. So he who does not think he is lacking has no desire for that which he does not think he lacks.

Plato, from The Symposium

I saw that everything around me was dedicated solely to the immediate gratification of the senses.

There it was, all of a sudden, right in my face. Eating. Drinking. Buying colourful things. Boats, vans, bikes, beer, steak, new clothes, secondhand clothes, burgers, chocolate bars, old castles, stately homes, cappuccinos, pirate adventure parks, gold courses, spas, tea rooms, pubs. Food drink, fun, entertainment, games, probably some sex somewhere in the mix. All of it came together suddenly into a kind of package of sensory overload and I saw that this was what we were, what we had become without really thinking about or planning it. Stimulating the sense, then reacting to the stimulus, profiting from it all: this was what our society was all about. Feeding the pleasure centres, spending and spending to keep it all coming at us.

Paul Kingsnorth, from Against the Machine

Books and Links:

The Symposium by Plato

Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Othello by William Shakespeare

1984 by George Orwell

Whispers of Immortality

by T. S. Elliot

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.

                         .  .  .  .  .

Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonnette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

Copyright T. S. Eliot; reproduced here for educational purposes only.

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