I had to read this book by Aldous Huxley many many years ago, back when I was in high school. I had a class in British novels, and we read this one as well as 1984, and both of those books gave me the creeps.
So I recently decided to give this one a reread, which I am in the midst of.
And it still gives me the creeps.
For those who have not read it, it is a vision of a very bleak future first published back in the 1930's. Humans are bred in a sort of factory setting and the embryos are manipulated in various ways (cutting off oxygen to make this batch of babies stupid, etc) for future very specific careers. It was written before modern cloning and genetic engineering techniques, but that is more or less what the intension is, under the knowledge of that day.
People are kept happy (or at least content) by free sex and drugs and various means of conditioning so they will be trouble free (and not trouble making) citizens of the world-government.
Funnily enough, my girlfriend just started reading my copy of it, after having finished 1984 this weekend. I've always prefered Orwells book myself, but I enjoy BNW as well.
This edition I picked up recently has a foreward written some 15 years after publication, where Huxley talks about what he might have done differently if he'd written it only later. Very interesting.
Today I had to give a speech about one of the main themes (Consumerism, Religion, body image, old age, sex...etc... (I chose religion)) and if I think that we are headed towards BNW or not (I chose not).
They have Big Brother in China, North Korea, and Cuba; they have him, too, in Iran and some other hardline Muslim nations; also, allowing for technological failings that make detailed surveillance of the rural population impossible, in a number of African countries. What you have in America, for all the bloviating that is done about the evil of Karl Rove, is nothing like 1984. Proof positive: people are allowed to bloviate about the evil of Karl Rove. They are not silenced, they are not censored, and they do not disappear into the night.
This is not to say that there is no threat to liberty in the U.S. There is; and much more of a threat in most other Western countries. Here in Canada, for instance, people have been convicted by the criminal courts for publishing particular Biblical quotations, and farmers have served prison sentences for selling their own wheat directly to customers instead of going through the approved state monopoly. Yet Canada is still considered one of the freest countries on earth.
Rejoice that your liberties are in danger: it proves that they still exist.
What I see is a world increasingly divided into two extreme and irrational camps, Brave New World in one, 1984 in the other. And what frightens me is that the advocates of the BNW society are the biggest defenders (in the West) of the Orwellian one.
The situation is very reminiscent of the map of the (spiritual) world in C.S. Lewis's The Pilgrim's Regress. Perhaps I shall post about that some time. And speaking of Lewis, Screwtape must be pleased as punch.
I, too, read this in my high school English IV class. I truly enjoyed it at the time, and find that it has stood the test of time well. I recently picked up the version with Brave New World Revisited, and want to read that at some point as well.
I think one of the things that makes people so uncomfortable about the novel is the uncanny accuracy of tone Huxley painted in the society of his world. He merely took ideas and fears that exist in the modern weltanshauung and logically extended them to larger proportions in order for us to examine them more readily.
The fact that this novel, which was published nearly 75 years ago, is still relevant and engaging to readers of all ages is a testament to the author's skill in adressing such sensitive topics in a non-threatening way.
All in all, an excellent novel. I recommend it highly.
It's been a long time since I read BNW. I clearly remember soma, Marx, John the savage(reading his damn shakespeare!) and Lenina and the engineered ebryoes.
I know there are numerous themes in the book, but something that stuck with me all these years is the power of Henry Ford. At the time (high school) I never realized just how much influence the man had on industry and society. Apparently he also influenced Huxley. Ford's ideals and American culture are reflected in the book. I don't think it was necessarily anti-American sentiment, but a sort of fear of how American attitudes could affect the rest of the world.
I definitely need to reread this one. It's frustrating to forget the details of such a classic.
Proverbs for Paranoids #3.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
