Brave New World Trivia
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59 free Brave New World trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Brave New World trivia for anyone who read it at school alongside Nineteen Eighty-Four and still remembers 'Our Ford' and the feelies. The quiz covers the novel in detail: the year AF 632, the Central London Hatchery, Bokanovsky's Process and the five castes, hypnopaedia, soma, Bernard Marx's height problem, Lenina Crowne's Malthusian belt, the Savage Reservation in New Mexico, Linda and John, the Director's public humiliation, Helmholtz Watson's chosen exile, Mustapha Mond's argument for happiness over truth, and the lighthouse near Puttenham where it all ends. It also asks where the title comes from and why it is ironic, why the French edition is called Le Meilleur des mondes, which H. G. Wells novel Huxley was parodying, who Mustapha Mond was named after, and what Neil Postman meant when he said Orwell feared what we hate and Huxley feared what we love. Then Huxley himself: the eye disease, teaching Orwell French at Eton, Hollywood, mescaline, and the death on 22 November 1963 that the world barely noticed. The 1980 and 1998 TV films, the 2020 Peacock series and the Iron Maiden album round it off. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Nineteen Eighty-Four and dystopian fiction quizzes.
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Q 01In Brave New World, what are the 'feelies'?
Films with touch effects
Films with touch effects: Lenina is thrilled by the one she takes John to see, but he is appalled by it.
Q 02The title Brave New World comes from a line in which play?
The Tempest
The Tempest: Miranda says it on first seeing the shipwrecked visitors, and her father Prospero deflates her with ''Tis new to thee'.
Q 03What is the French title of Brave New World, alluding to Leibniz via Voltaire's Candide?
Le Meilleur des mondes
Le Meilleur des mondes: Leibniz meant 'the best of all possible worlds' in earnest, before Voltaire's Candide turned it into mockery.
Q 04Which 1954 Aldous Huxley book recounts his experiences of taking mescaline?
The Doors of Perception
The Doors of Perception: Jim Morrison took his band's name, the Doors, from the book's title.
Q 05Huxley said Brave New World began as a parody of which H. G. Wells novel?
Men Like Gods
Men Like Gods: Huxley said he set out to poke fun at Wells but got carried away by his own ideas.
Q 06Why are lower castes conditioned to hate the countryside but love country sports?
So they consume more
So they consume more: country sports must need elaborate apparatus and trips out of town, because 'a love of nature keeps no factories busy'.
Q 07Helmholtz Watson can't stop laughing when John reads him parents bullying a daughter to marry, from which play?
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet: a girl pleading with her parents strikes Helmholtz as so absurd that he bursts out laughing, and John angrily locks the book away.
Q 08Bokanovsky's Process is a technique for doing what?
Cloning up to 96 people from one egg
Cloning up to 96 people from one egg: the Director boasts that one egg's identical twins can staff a whole small factory.
Q 09Which World State technique drums slogans like 'Everyone belongs to everyone else' into children by endless repetition?
Hypnopaedia
Hypnopaedia: early attempts to teach children facts in their sleep failed, but whispered moral slogans became 'the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time'.
Q 10What is soma?
A happiness-inducing drug
A happiness-inducing drug: back in London, Linda takes so much that her doctor expects it to stop her breathing within a month or two.
Q 11Where did Huxley get the name soma?
A Vedic ritual drink
A Vedic ritual drink: the original soma was drunk in solemn religious rites, while the World State hands out soma as a daily ration.
Q 12Why are World State children brought into the Hospital for the Dying?
So they won't fear death
So they won't fear death: the best toys are kept there and they get chocolate cream on death days, so dying feels routine.
Q 13Before John discovers Shakespeare, what is the only book his mother Linda owns on the Reservation?
A manual for embryo workers
Q 21Who turns out to be John's father?
The Director of Hatcheries
The Director of Hatcheries: when John kneels and calls him 'my father' in public, the room roars with laughter and he resigns in shame.
Q 22Why is John's parentage so scandalous in the World State?
Because it was procreative
Because it was procreative: sleeping around is normal, but child-bearing is so obscene that the word 'father' sets off hysterical laughter.
Q 23Helmholtz Watson chooses exile to which remote place, hoping bad weather will help his writing?
The Falklands
A manual for embryo workers: young John needs a quarter of an hour just to read its title, then throws it on the floor in tears.
Q 14What physical oddity marks out Bernard Marx, an Alpha-Plus misfit?
He is unusually short
He is unusually short: lower castes are conditioned to link size with rank, so Bernard worries whether a Delta will show him the respect due an Alpha.
Q 15Where does the Director threaten to exile Bernard?
Iceland
Iceland: Bernard swaggers out boasting of his defiance, then panics when he hears the Director is already seeking his replacement.
Q 16What is Lenina Crowne's job?
Foetus technician
Foetus technician: students first meet her in the Embryo Store, inoculating future tropical workers against disease while they still have gills.
Q 17What is the name of the contraceptive device women wear in the World State?
Malthusian belt
Malthusian belt: it's named for Thomas Malthus, who, ironically, urged moral restraint rather than contraception to check population growth.
Q 18The Savage Reservation that Bernard and Lenina visit is in which US state?
New Mexico
New Mexico: Lenina, who has never seen anyone grow old, is horrified by the villagers' poverty, disease and old age.
Q 19What is the name of the Reservation village where John was raised?
Malpais
Malpais: Linda was stranded there after getting lost on holiday, so John grew up in the pueblo but was never accepted by the villagers.
Q 20What does Mustapha Mond call the 'chief reason' Shakespeare is banned in the World State?
Because it's old
Because it's old: 'We haven't any use for old things here,' Mond says, and people too content to know passion wouldn't understand it anyway.
The Falklands: Mond calls such exile a reward, since the islands hold 'the most interesting set of men and women' anywhere.
Q 24What is Mustapha Mond's title?
World Controller for Western Europe
World Controller for Western Europe: once a physicist whose research went too far, he chose to become a Controller rather than be exiled to an island.
Q 25In Mond's 'Cyprus experiment', what happens when an island is populated only with Alphas?
They fall into civil war
They fall into civil war: everyone schemes for the top jobs, and the few survivors beg to be governed again.
Q 26The World State's motto is 'Community, Identity' and what?
Stability
Stability: Mond calls it 'the primal and the ultimate need', worth giving up art, free science and religion to secure.
Q 27How does Mond sum up John's position at the end of their debate?
He claims the right to be unhappy
He claims the right to be unhappy, and with it the right to grow old, catch typhoid and live in fear of tomorrow: 'I claim them all.'
Q 28Where does John retreat to live as a hermit at the end of Brave New World?
A lighthouse near Puttenham
A lighthouse near Puttenham: he whips himself there, and once a hidden filmmaker's footage is released, crowds of sightseers descend.
Q 29How does Brave New World end for John?
He hangs himself
He hangs himself: ashamed of joining the crowd's orgy the night before, he is found by the first sightseers to arrive that evening.
Q 30Why does Fanny Crowne share Lenina's last name?
Only ten thousand surnames are in use
Only ten thousand surnames are in use among two billion people; Lenina's namesake Fanny scolds her for seeing only Henry for four months.