The book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a tale about a future society trapped in conformism. In this society babies are created artificially in assembly lines, are conditioned by hundreds of repetitions of government propaganda during their sleep, and are decided by their conditioning whether they are Alphas, Betas, Deltas, or Epsilons- varying levels of intelligence. God has been replace with Henry Ford, who is worshiped as was Jesus. The people are kept happy through a routine of taking government prescribed hard drugs when unhappy, and government sponsored orgies. One of the repeated lines is "everyone belongs to everyone else", encouraging everyone to have sex with each other. Monogamous relationships are considered a terrible sin, and the word "mother" is the worst that could ever be said. This life of status quo is challenged when a disillusioned Alpha, Bernard, brings a "Savage" into the midst of this harmonious society.
This book is not are particularly challenging read. The writing is fairly straight forward, except for one interesting chapter in which Huxley tells three stories at once, switching point of view in a fairly poetic style. The book is timeless in its view of a possible future, one that with increasing scientific research into the genetics of babies is becoming less and less "sci fi." The book looks at conformism, sexuality, religion, tradition, technology, and happiness and looks them in new ways, making all of them seem more superficial and less important than we would claim they are.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Though somewhat brief, this review will prove informative for those who, in class today, were intrigued by your presentation. You've managed to give enough information about the setting and situation of the novel to whet a reader's appetite; however, some information on Huxley himself (and his antipathy toward totalitarianism) might have helped as well. Nonetheless, a good job on this!
Post a Comment