quipowerty's Full Review: Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley wrote this novel, undoubtedly the best work that will forever define him and his beliefs, to express his concern over what was happening to human and political values, especially in a time when technology was advancing rapidly and relentlessly. He was especially concerned that Western capitalism would eventually overwhelm traditional values and trap humanity in hi-tech slavery.
When it was first published in 1932, critics dismissed it as a farce or a banal sci-fi tale. As Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and other totalitarian regimes around the world rose to prominence, however, critics and readers alike began to take a much harder look at Huxley’s tale. His novel reached greater popularity as the Cold War began, Communism began to spread, military dictatorships appeared in the Third World, and horrors of the Holocaust became known to the world. It has also come to symbolize people's increasingly apparent addiction to consumerism, collective thinking, and the info-entertainment mentality that's very real in the US and is spreading elsewhere.
The plot of this novel involves two Alpha-caste intellectuals, Bernard Marx and Helmholz Watson, who along with Lenina Crowne decide to take a trip to an Indian Reservation in North America. Among the residents of that reservation is John the savage, whose mother Linda is a Brave New Worlder who was cast into the reservation after getting impregnated by a high official who was subsequently sacked. They bring the two exiles back with them to Civilization. Linda longs to go back to the soma-filled World she left behind, but John the Savage begins to see how corrupt and ineffectual the society really is…
The characters are as follows:
John the Savage is a natural-born man whose mother was banished to an Indian reservation while pregnant with him. It is uncertain how he came to know Shakespeare’s plays while growing in primitive conditions at the Indian reservation. It is overshadowed, however, by the culture shock that John endures as he is introduced to ‘civilization.’ Linda was banished to the Indian reservation after it was revealed that she had an affair with the manager of a human hatchery (the director was subsequently fired). John watches his mother grow fat and old-looking while growing up in the reservation. He has already learned a lot about the world that his mother misses. The more he spends time in it, the less attractive it is to him. The way its residents take soma to end their emotional suffering, for example, is repulsive to the Savage, who is used to pain and unhappiness and thinks nothing of it. He finally explodes when his mother Linda dies in a hospital, literally old and gray, surrounded in her deathbed by other patients with smooth-skinned faces.
Barnard Marx is an Alpha-class intellectual whose physical growth was stunted by an error made at the Human Processing Center where he is processed as an embryo. He thus grows up realizing that he can’t fit completely into the society he is in. Unlike most Alphas, Bernard is relatively short in stature, which further increases his unhappiness. He is determined to change the society, either by revamping it or working his way up to its echelons. At one point he tries to use John the savage to gain stature in the BNW but is unsuccessful. Like most Alphas, Bernard is conditioned to be an obedient coward. But his condition wasn’t completed; thus he is cowardly but not always obedient, which ultimately gets him in trouble with …
Mustapha Mond is the World Controller of Western Europe, one of ten worldwide. During his early years Mustapha dawdled in literature and other forbidden works, but eventually he came under heavy pressure from the general society and gave up these pursuits to become a World Controller and participate in its pursuit of superficial happiness. This clearly puts him at odds with both John and Bernard. The way he justifies the BNW to the two of them gives a good insight into the ideology behind it. He is a firm believer that stability and happiness at any price should always take precedence over independent thought and life-changing experiences. Thus pain and suffering should be suppressed or minimized.
Lenina Crowne is the essence of the fully conditioned Brave New Worlder. She is essentially a bimbo addicted to soma, which she uses to suppress painful feelings. Her first affair in the book is with Bernard Marx. She later gets attracted to John the Savage after visiting the Indian Reservation and falling in love with him. Her sexual advances begin to turn John off. Ultimately John condemns Lenina as an “imprudent strumpet” and dumps her.
Helmholz Watson, a full-grown Alpha, is Bernard’s close friend. He shares Bernard Marx’s disillusionment with the rigidities of the World State, mainly because he considers himself too intelligent and too good for his job writing hypochondriac essays. He could be best described as your typical ‘Aryan race’ superman who’s literally too 'perfect' for this world, and is outgrowing his social and physical conditioning. As the story progresses Helmholz begins to transform into an individual with his own thoughts.
The biggest character is the overall society in which all five characters must survive. It can be best described as a Borg-like collective that suppresses any hint of independent thought even from the very demagogues who govern it.
The factory processing of embryos into up to 96 identical twins is pretty much self-explanatory. This makes it easy for the “collective” to divide the embryos into strict castes specifically designed to do a certain type of labor. Epsilons, for example, are the lowest caste, designed to work in maintenance, cleaning, holding doors, and other little dirty chores that other castes have been programmed to avoid. Alphas and Betas are the intellectuals of the society, while Gammas and Deltas are the middle castes, working in hospitals, offices, and other mid-level jobs.
Then there is soma, a designer drug similar to Ecstasy. All BNW inhabitants are required to take the drug in order to keep them calm and “happy”. The drug has hold of Lenina, and has turned her into a fairly docile slave with little emotion or initiative whatsoever. This is the case of many other Brave New Worlders, whose government does everything possible to stomp or prevent innovative and individual thinking. When a person’s mind is constantly distracted from thought by chemicals, sensual pleasures, or some other factor, he can’t think or innovate like a normal person.
But the biggest tragedy about BNW is the extreme collectivization of human beings, who are clearly indoctrinated into a Nazi Germany-like collective where they can’t even get angry at each other, think independent thoughts of any kind, or even bully one another. Here a bully or a rebel would be overwhelmed by a whole society that would in turn ostracize him, as happened to Bernard Marx. Every recreational activity, from orgy Porgy to touchy-feely films, is done collectively, with little or no room for individual development allowed even among the highest classes. Even Mustapha Mond is trapped in the system; had he not accepted the position of World Controller he would have ended up being ostracized and exiled. There is no room for individuality or even ambitious individuals of any kind taking power.
If anything else, 1984 describes what it was like to live in Stalin’s extremist regime. But even there the residents have their own independent minds, although some in the higher ranks frequently torture and brainwash others for their own personal pleasure and for the sake of their ideology. Brave New World goes even further, literally conditioning its inhabitants from birth to do a specific task and nothing else. The perfection of the division of labor required in a complex society that is the BNW has effectively stripped human beings even to oppress and torture, much less even bully one another.
The main grammar of the book can be best described as a cross between Victorian long sentences and more cut-up sentences that we began seeing in the 20th Century. Huxley wrote in this mixed style, perhaps deliberately to give readers an idea of the time he lived in, when Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were building up both their dictatorships and their armies. It fits the mood and plot of the book perfectly, and the horrid details he gives in BNW more than make up for the dry sentences one will end up reading.
BNW should be read by everyone interested in today's bizarre trend of increased genetic research, the over-consumption of cheap banal products, and most of all the extreme collectivization we're already seeing to some extent in today's society, courtesy of McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Staples, all federal and state government bureaucracies, and everything in between.
Surely it doesn’t have to come to this. Think of a society where people act like that instinctively serve a specific function and often when their usefulness is diminished they’re disposed of. That’s Brave New World. Is that what we want in today's society? I certainly don't.
Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future-where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically...More at HotBookSale
On the 75th anniversary of its publication, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before. Cloning, feel-goo...More at Buy.com
Huxley s story shows a futuristic World State where all emotion, love, art, and human individuality have been replaced by social stability. An ominous...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.