Aldous Huxley and the Search for Meaning: A Study of the Eleven Novels

239 Pages·2010·1.04 MB·English

by  Ronald T. Sion

Aldous Huxley and
the Search for Meaning
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Aldous Huxley and
the Search for Meaning
A Study of the Eleven Novels
RONALD T. SION
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Sion, Ronald T.
Aldous Huxley and the search for meaning : a study of the
eleven novels / Ronald T. Sion.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-4746-6
softcover : 50# alkaline paper
1. Huxley, Aldous, 1894–1963. I. Title.
PR6015.U9Z877 2010
823'.912—dc22 2010018583
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2010 Ronald T. Sion. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover Aldous Huxley, ca. ¡950s (Photofest)
Manufactured in the United States of America
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Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
ONE. The Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
TWO. The Four Social Satires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Crome Yellow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Antic Hay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Those Barren Leaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Point Counter Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
THREE. Three Novels of Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Eyeless in Gaza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Time Must Have a Stop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
FOUR. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis: Three Futuristic
Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Thesis: Brave New World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Antithesis: Ape and Essence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Synthesis: Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
FIVE. Standing Alone: The Genius and the Goddess . . . . . . . . . 179
SIX. Integration and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Appendix: Selected Books and Articles by Aldous Huxley . . . . . . . . . . 205
Chapter Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
v
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Preface
“One can’t have something for nothing.”—Aldous Huxley1
How frequently these words of Huxley—whether directly to the reader
in an essay or through the mouth of a character in a work of fiction—are
repeated. Humanity is not always aware of the price it pays for progress, or
at least what it renders as progress. Many times the price is far greater than
the reward, especially when it means people must surrender their liberties,
their freedoms, or the very essence of what it means to be human. A recent
ad campaign for a popular cereal asks the question as to whether progress
has improved our lives. It cites landfills, the reduction of natural resources,
and climate change as just some of the challenges attributable to progress.
Cleverly the ad goes on to state that the cereal has put the “no” in “innova-
tion.”2 This may be a unique approach to sell a cereal, but the essence of
the message speaks to Huxley’s import that for every action there is a reac-
tion—unfortunately, the reaction may be what our age has come to label
the unintended consequences of progress. Global warming, pollution of the
air and natural resources, AIDS, skin cancer, the sometimes deadly adverse
reactions to medications, the ethical questions surrounding surrogate moth-
erhood and cloning are only a small number of these unintended responses.
In an age when government has grown exponentially to soften the blow
of an economic recession and the fear of terrorism has sometimes hindered
our liberties, Huxley’s prescient vision becomes all the more dramatic. First
looking around at the somewhat frivolous nature of his counterparts, he
wrote works of a satiric nature; later, in a journey to self-discovery, his lean-
ings became more mystical in disposition as he became strikingly aware of
Hamlet’s words in Shakespeare’s tragedy about “the undiscover’d country
from whose bourn no traveler returns.”3 With an uncanny awareness of the
complexities of the human condition and questions surrounding that con-
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PREFACE
dition, his writings frequently border on the psychological as well as the spir-
itual. With a telescopic imagination, he peered into the lens of a future world
and wondered if the human race would be happy with what it had achieved.
In his words: “Who are we? What is our destiny? How can the frightful ways
of God be justified? Before the rise of science the only answers to these ques-
tions came from the philosopher-poets and poet-philosophers.”4
In fact, Aldous Huxley, as a writer of fiction in the 20th century, will-
ingly assumes the role of a modern philosopher-king or literary prophet by
examining the essence of what it means to be human in the modern age. As
is evident in his fiction to be examined and supported by the artist’s own
words in selected essays and letters, Huxley was a prolific genius who was
always searching throughout his life for an understanding of self and one’s
place within the universe. Engaging the reader in imaginative narratives, he
was to ask numerous probing questions about humanity’s relationship to its
physical and metaphysical worlds.
The basis of Huxley’s philosophical view of life is succinctly captured
in the words of Boethius, an eminent Christian philosopher of the sixth cen-
tury, whom he quotes in an epigraph to one of his chapters contained in an
anthology on spirituality: “In other living creatures ignorance of self is
nature; in man it is vice.”5 In the eleven novels of Huxley, one may discern
a probing pattern in search of self-awareness and self-actualization. This
self-awareness evolved across time through Huxley’s own life experiences
and his inquisitive mind that explored all the venues of human aspiration.
Seeing with new eyes, this contemporary philosopher-king sought to warn
humanity of its follies, especially the foolish belief that material progress
would take care of all human woes. Huxley articulated early in his fiction
that humanity’s technological arrogance might have aided him in improv-
ing his physical standard of living but frequently at a significant cost. Liv-
ing in sterile, crowded urban environments, modern man often finds himself
isolated from his neighbor, alienated from meaningful achievements in a
mechanized setting, and deprived of individual freedom. Controlled by an
ever-growing power elite and conditioned to purchase an endless array of
gadgets in a consumer-driven culture, the human race reflected in Huxley’s
fiction is generally discontent, restless, and spiritually bereft, having lost all
sense of identity, meaning, and purpose. Huxley ardently believed that it
was his responsibility as a literary artist to display the failings of humanity
imaginatively. By doing so, he might facilitate the reader’s entrance into the
realm of self-examination.
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Preface
Emphasizing that no one will ever get something for nothing, Huxley
presses the issue that a pompous populace will pay the ultimate price in a
loss of humane characteristics. Hoping that people would take the time to
stand back and evaluate whether their human values were progressing along
with their scientific innovations, Huxley optimistically concludes that it is
never too late for humanity to change its ways. Change, however, will come
about only with pain and a significant effort. Still, Huxley refused to give
up the hope that people would come to seek out the ultimate meaning of
life and move in the direction of spiritual awakening.
The journey to self-awareness came about gradually for Huxley; it is
posited in this study that each work reflects the man—who he was, what he
experienced, and what he thinks at a given point in time. Herein lies the
uniqueness of this research since it focuses on a progression of Huxley’s
thinking and world view through the eleven works of fiction that encom-
pass his life. While others have written works of a biographical nature, and
certainly there are a number of volumes of critical analysis, the interfacing
of Huxley’s essays and letters woven within the fabric of his novels reflect-
ing a progressive journey to self-awareness renders this study different, if not
fully unique. In essence, this inquiry asks what Huxley was thinking and
experiencing during the writing of each of his eleven novels. The answer
comes in the form of his many essays and letters wherein the man expresses
himself directly. The fiction, therefore, is the man in both his being and in
his becoming. Huxley never rejected the notion that he was forever walking
a slender tightrope between the development of story and narrative bent on
social, political and moral instruction, but what he states indirectly through
the mouths and actions of his characters, he speaks candidly in his multi-
farious essays and letters. It is noted in this analysis that Huxley stated that
he wrote not for the reader, but for himself—as a means to explore and
express what he was thinking at any given point in time. And his thoughts
and feelings varied according to the times, the situations, and the personal
experiences of a very probing mind. Never ashamed of the contradictory
paths he sometimes chose, he consistently sought the wisdom of the ages to
guide him on his own road to self-actualization. Accordingly, it is the very
soul of the man that is woven skillfully and intricately within the framework
of his fiction.
While numerous scholarly and critical studies have been researched in
this undertaking, and Bedford’s biography of Huxley has proved invaluable,
it is Huxley’s words as expressed in editor Smith’s collection of letters and
3