Totalitarian Novels: Brave New World and Pleasure

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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