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Symbols
While the World State doesn't have a conventional religion, it does have a symbolic and revered father figure: Henry T. Ford. Thus, Huxley’s use of “Ford” as a kind of deity throughout Brave New World (characters instinctively refer to “Our Ford,” “fordliness,” and other such variations on the name) argues that Ford’s 20th-century technological advances shaped a future in which mass production would be applied to human society. Ford is the perfect "god" for World State society because, in developing his Ford Motor Company, he invented mass production by means of the assembly line and the specialization of workers, each of whom has one single, specific job. The World State takes Ford's ideas about mass production and the assembly line and applies them to biologically to human beings. World State citizens, therefore, deify Ford as a vaguely remembered, distant historical figure who literally created the world as they know it.
Ford Quotes in Brave New World
The Brave New World quotes below all refer to the symbol of Ford. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3
Quotes
“You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk.”
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Chapter 5
Quotes
“Ford, we are twelve; oh make us one,
Like drops within the Social River;
Oh, make us now together run
As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.
Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,
Annihilating Twelve-in-One!
We long to die, for when we end,
Our larger life has but begun.
Feel how the Greater Being comes!
Rejoice and, in rejoicings, die!
Melt in the music of the drums!
For I am you and you are I.
Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them One.
Boys at One with girls at peace;
Orgy-porgy gives release.”
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Get the entire Brave New World LitChart as a printable PDF.
Ford Symbol Timeline in Brave New World
The timeline below shows where the symbol Ford appears in Brave New World. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
Next, the Director explains the origins of hypnopaedia (sleep-teaching). In the days when “Our Ford” was still alive, a Polish boy, Reuben, went to sleep one night while the radio...
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Chapter 3
...children playing a complicated game called Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy. With wonder, the Director recalls that, in Ford’s day, games were played with minimal equipment, like balls and sticks, and didn’t increase consumption.
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...group speaks up, repeating that such old-fashioned policies were terrible. The Director eagerly introduces “his fordship,” Mustapha Mond, one of the State’s 10 World Controllers.
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...makes the students shudder with disgust), and families lived together in squalid, cramped homes. Our Ford—or, rather, “Our Freud”—had pointed out the dangers of the family and the narrowness of monogamous...
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Chapter 5
...chants do their work. The people call out in ecstasy to the coming "Great Being,” Ford. Only Bernard hears nothing, faking his excitement. Loudspeakers start to chant "orgy-porgy," and the Service...
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Chapter 16
...Mustapha Mond’s study. Helmholtz is in good spirits, while the Savage browses through one of Ford’s books, and Bernard looks frightened and unhappy. Mond comes in and shakes hands with them...
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In Ford’s day, Mond muses, people valued knowledge above all and seemed to believe that scientific progress...
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