Here, these might help:
Sarcasm
•“A squat grey building of only thirty-flour stories.” (pg 1)
This introductory sentence is clearly sarcastic as a building which is thirty-flour stories high is not ‘squat’ or short in any sense.
•“Excellent… it might have almost be done on purpose.” (Henry Foster, pg 15)
This quote was regarding the babies in the World Centre being electrified, and it is sarcastic because the electrifying was done on purpose.
•We in our calendar use AD – but in Brave New World, this is substituted for AF or ‘After Ford’. This is sarcastic in the sense that it implies how dominant the business Ford is – it’s as though it has become a whole new era and everything before it is primitive and unimportant. The aim of the use of satire here is to create a humorous aspect and at the same time cautioning the audience about the future.
•“cleanliness is next to fordliness”(Lenina, pg 90)
This comment is sarcastic in the way it has substituted ‘godliness’ for ‘fordliness’, thus implying that Ford is God.
•“orgy-porgy…”
This manipulation of a childhood rhyme is sarcastic in the way it suggests that innocence itself, symbolised by the childish nature of this term, has been perverted.
•“community, identity, stability” (planetary motto, Page 1).
This sarcastic paragon implies that in Brave New World’s society, community equates to identity, and social cohesion supplants to individual autonomy, thus giving the readers a warning about where we are heading.
•“Of coarse they didn’t content themselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could do that” (Henry Foster, Page 9).
This comment is sarcastic because to hatch embryos in a laboratory is quite complex – not something ‘any cow’ can do.
Lampooning
•“A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, following nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director’s heels” (pg 1)
This description is lampooning because it ridicules the naivety and robotic behaviour of the students by showing them to be quite nervous and following the Director around desperately like robots.
Burlesque
•“Eight minutes of hard x rays being about as much an egg can stand…and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol” (pg 4)
The fertilisation process seemed pretty normal until Mr. Huxley said the fetuses were dosed with alcohol. In the real world that is the last thing you would do to a growing fetus. In a way Huxley is mocking present human behaviour where soon to be mothers are drinking alcohol, this would in fact deform the baby, in the brave new world, it helps develop the baby. The audience is struck with slight humour but it makes you think about our present day faults. In the same way that some humans mistreat their unborn children, we will mistreat the world in trying to create utopia via increase of developing technology.
•“You ought to be a little more promiscuous”
“Four months of Henry Foster” without having another man & why he’d be furious if he knew” (Fanny, pg 32)
In our society we expect a couple, when together, to stay together and not go around flaunting and being adulterous with another man. In Brave New World it is thought as immoral to be seeing only one man at a time or for more than a week. Marriage was like a swear wordLenina’s friend Fanny said this. This type of behaviour today is very much illegal. It shocks people.
Irony
•Mustapha Mond mentions the quote said by “his fordship” That history is rubbish, “History is Bunk, wisk, wisk, King Lear”p.17. History is supposedly wiped out of the brave new world but in fact Mr. Mond himself has said many quotes from Shakespeare’s plays, including ones from King Lear, during the end of Brave New World. “Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears, and sometimes voices.” p.179
•“We must condition the masses to hate the country…. A love of nature keeps no factory busy” (Henry Ford, p.17)
The quote is filled with irony. Nature itself is the vital force for all life including the workers in the factory. Humans need water and food in order to survive. This is retrieved from nature. Without these essentials the workers would die and therefore the factory will NOT be busy so in fact a love for nature will keep a factory busy. The DHC mentions this.
•Although the ‘planetary motto’ is “Community, Identity, Stability” these people who live in this so called Utopia, have no individual identity, “ninety six identical twins working ninety six identical machines!” These quotes contradict each other in an ironic way. Said by Mustafa Mond. Pg.4
•“Everyone belongs to everyone else” (Henry Ford, pg 31)
Although he says this, it can be seen that nobody belongs to anybody as kids don’t have parents there is no sense of family or belonging.
•The people working in the World Centre are introduced with formality and coldness, “gloved in pale corpse- coloured rubber” and “academic goose-flesh” addresses that not even humans bring life to the dead building. The only warmth ironically is radiated from the barrels of a microscope the very symbols of human science. In this society technology obviously has a dominant place. Said by author(3rd person) p.4