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Module Five: Literary Connections

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell

This book (Brave New World) has been variously described as science fiction, a novel of ideas, and a satire. Discuss the aptness of these descriptions, and say which, if any, seems to you the best.

Huxley produced a very large volume and variety of work in his long and active life as a writer, yet of all this Brave New World remains, for many people, the only book that they can identify as his. Try to account for the lasting fame of this novel.

Discuss the part played in this book (1984) by the proles.

"Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-four is not so much the hero as the occasion for powerful social satire." Discuss.

If Brave New World was Aldous Huxley's technocratic purgator, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four describes a hell beyond Huxley's worst fears. Compare and contrast the two novels as visions of a future that has gone dramatically wrong.

To what extent and by what means do Huxley and Orwell make these two novels convincing as stories?

 

Examination Paper

Exam Paper with examiner comments

 

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