Aldous Huxley

1. Aldous Huxley By Ashley Sykes

2. Early Years • He was born in Surrey England in 1894 • He was the third son of the writer and scientist Leonard Huxley and Julia Amold, who founded Prior’s Field School • Huxley began his learning in his father’s well-equipped botanical laboratory, then continued at a school named Hillside. Then he continued his education at Eton College • His mom was his teacher who supervised his until she became ill. She died in 1908.

3. Early Years Cont… • Three years later he suffered an illness (Keratitis Punctata). Which left him practically blind for two to three years. This definitely stopped his career in science and it disqualified him from service in WWl. • Once his eyesight recovered sufficiently, he was able to study English Lit. at Balliol College, in Oxford. • He graduated in 1916 with First Class Honors. • To earn a living he taught French for a year at Eton, where Eric Blair ( later known by the penname George Orwell) was one of his students. • For a short while in 1918 he was employed acquiring provision at the Air Ministry but never desired a career in administration

4. Life • In the 1920’s he mainly lived in Italy and he married a woman named Maria. • Eventually he moved to California in 1937 with his wife Maria. He tried to apply for United States Citizenship after WW2, but was denied because he would not say he would take up arms to defend America. He remained in the United States anyway. • During the 1930’s, Huxley turned increasingly towards an exploration of fundamental questions of philosophy, sociology, politics, and ethics. • In 1955 his wife Maria died of cancer and the following year he married an Italian violinist Laura Archera

5. Life Cont… • Around 1950 Huxley began experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs. In 1953 he was introduced to mescaline by Humphry Osmond. He described this experiment in his book The Doors of Perception. Two years later he was introduced to LSD by Al Hubbard. He came to believe it gave users essentially the same experiences that mystics attained through fasting, prayer, and meditation. • He had a great interest in the process of death and dying as well as in the mental states achieved

6. Brave New World • It takesplace in Central London in a Hatching and Conditioning Centre • It’s a factory where they produce thousands of nearly identical human embryos. • They are conditioned to belong to one of the five caste. The castes are Alpha- are destined to become the leaders and thinkers of the World State, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon- are stunted and stupefied by oxygen deprivation. • They are all programmed the way the Director wants them to be. They use sleep-teaching, while they are sleeping there a repeating lesson is playing in their head

7. Brave New World Cont… • Their Focus is to remove strong emotions, desires, and human relations from society. • Brave New World form the anti-utopian tradition in literature and has become a future world in which the human spirit is subject to conditioning and control

8. Books • Crome Yellow (1921)- attacks Victorian and Edwardian Social principles which led to WW1 and its terrible aftermath • Antic Hay (1923)- It expressed the mood of disenchantment of the 1920’s. he was condemned for his explicit discussion of sex and free thought • Those Barren Leaves (1925) • In Point Counter Point (1928)- one of his strongest novels, Huxley confronts modern man’s disillusionment with religion, art, sex, and politics • The Perennial Philosophy (1945)- an anthology of mystical writing • The Doors Of Perception (1954)- “the effects of psychedelic drugs” • Heaven and Hell (1956)- ” ”

9. Death • In 1960, Huxley was diagnosed with cancer. In the following years his health was deteriorating. On his death bed, unable to speak he wrote a request to his wife to get LSD. According to her book (This Timeless Moment), she injected him with it. He died peacefully at November 22,1963. His death was overshadowed because it was the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated