My Thoughts on Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

by M Cody McPhail

Hundreds of years from now and after society has shifted many times, we've finally created a utopic system where happiness is the highest mode to exist in. How is happiness achieved you may ask? Drugs, brain washing, genetic manipulation, and a caste system.

So, not everyone is happy, but at least the chosen elite are living it up (just like right now). The rest of society are intentionally molded to not care about anything and do what they're told. They'll never question their place in society.

Natural births are unheard of. Deep loving relationships don't exist. Art is not really a thing anymore. The highest art form are racist interactive erotic action movies. Drugs keep everyone satiated. Happiness has been manufactured, not earned. Everyone is living a lie in this new society. Yet, there are no more wars and everyone is taken care of.

In North America, none of this is taking place. Giant reservations exist where native peoples are living in horrific conditions. They don't have much and aren't being provided with a social system to help them live better (just like today).

Brave New World asks what would happen if you put a marginalized self-educated outsider into a tightly engineered totalitarian society.

Bernard Marx is an alpha that came out of the genetic oven half baked. He's got issues. He questions the entire makeup of his world and doesn't agree with how it is run. Lenina Crowne is a typical Alpha woman and is only interested in maintaining the status quo.

John the Savage (that's what he's called in the book) was raised in dire conditions. He was brought up by his mother, who once lived in the world state society, but he was abandoned by a group visiting North America. She never tried to get back to the world she grew up in. Her son only knows the impoverished world on the reservations.

When Bernard and Lenina go on vacation to Sante Fe, they meet John. He and his mother are the only non native persons living in this area of America. John's whole life has been a struggle. When he wasn't being harassed or bullied by someone, he was reading a collection of Shakespeare's plays. This is how he was able to achieve a decent education. Albeit an education from the 17th century. His mother was always inebriated on alcohol and mescaline. Her boyfriend was abusive.

Bernard and Lenina decide to bring John and his mother back to London. They want to show John their world. Though John is excited, learning and studying Shakespeare didn't prepare him for this sexually graphic drugged out society. It did prepare him to not agree with the way these people live. His mission in life becomes letting them all know how much they suck at living.

H. G. Wells was an enormously popular writer at the beginning of the 20th century. His book Men Like Gods was published in 1923. Aldous Huxley read this book and didn't like it. He felt it was too optimistic and naive in its plans for a future society. As he was prone to do, he decided to satirize this work of Well's. This is what became Brave New World.

And thus modern science fiction was born. The narrative vehicle for ideas without as much focus on the contemporary high standards in literature. This book is not known for its prose. It feels very episodic and not the work of a literary master. The ideas, especially at the time, are so out of left field that it gives the book a singular feel. Each section tells of a future in which mankind no longer has free will. They all think they do. It could be the perfect society. Everything preplanned. Everyone addicted to sex. Everyone on the perfect drug that has no bad side effects. It makes you question whether Huxley agrees with this planned pseudo utopia or not.

The first of our two main characters, Bernard Marx, is a flawed member in this world. He questions all aspects of the world state too much. Everyone else has been properly programmed to accept everything in society. The programming didn't stick with him. He doesn't fit in. But unlike other dystopias, he will not be killed for his nonconfomity. He'll be exiled to somewhere nice.

Our second main character, John, lives on a reservation in New Mexico. He lives an impoverished life yet he's read all of Shakespeare's plays. He knows what great art is. He knows what suffering is. He knows that true joy comes from experiencing rock bottom. The members of the world state will never know what great art is, what sadness is, what the highest of blissful ecstatic emotion is like. His imperfect world has art in it. The world state does not (discounting their racist feelie movies).

So it's hard to say which world in this book wins. A bit of both would be nice. This is why Brave New World has stood the test of time. It has kept Huxley's name in the history books. These two worlds colliding makes this book good. Its ideas that make fun of modern society are the spice. The progressive views on sex and genetic/societal manipulation will forever be relevant due to us all being human.

It was quite hilarious in parts. I don't think many people feel that way nowadays. He's constantly poking fun and you can tell how annoyed Huxley is at certain things. I really enjoyed the book but it is written in a very stiff and dry way. Some of the ideas were a bit shocking to me which was a surprise. This doesn't have the same level of prose as in 1984 or We but it holds its own in comparison due to its creativity. No one wants this society. If we keep being the greatest consumers history has ever known, we might not have a choice in its implementation.