When I decided to read a book for Banned Book Week, it was
easy to choose which one. My son’s
World Lit class his senior year of high school last year read Brave New
World by Aldous Huxley, and I’ve been
wanting to read it ever since. I
read George Orwell’s 1984 in 9th grade but never had a
chance to read this classic satiric novel that launched the entire dystopian
genre.
Brave New World
takes place roughly six centuries in the future, in a world quite
unrecognizable from our own. In
this fictional future, Henry Ford sparked a new era when he invented mass
production and assembly lines; in fact, the world began an entirely new
timeline, naming years AF for After Ford.
This futuristic world has taken the concepts of mass production and, to
some degree, communism and applied them to people. Passion – and anything that might inspire passion – has been
abolished so that the world works in a very efficient and effective way.
Here, one of the leaders explains how their world works, in
a rare honest moment:
“The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma.”
Soma is a feel-good drug that is widely distributed to every
citizen, after work, when they want to relax, or anytime they feel the
slightest bit stressed. On the
surface, from this description, they’ve created a sort of utopia where everyone’s
life is pleasant all the time. Of
course, that lack of distress comes at a price, but most of the world’s
citizens are blissfully unaware of what they are missing.
The intricacies of this future world are explored through
several main characters. There is
Lenina, an attractive, happy, perfect citizen, and Bernard, an associate of
Lenina’s at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre and her
sometime lover, who is seen as strange and aloof by his colleagues. Secretly, Bernard is unhappy with his
life – a condition almost unheard of in his world – and he questions things
that are not supposed to be questioned.
Lenina and Bernard take a trip to New Mexico to visit a
Savage Reservation, a rare experience in this new world. A Savage Reservation is, as you might
expect, a wild preserve separate from the rest of the world, where Native
Americans live as they have lived for centuries. There, the couple meets John, a young white man who was
brought up among the Indians. The
intersection of their very different lives allows the reader even more insight
into the conflicts between the old world and the new.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Brave New World; it is incredibly clever, even funny, with a
fascinating look into one possible future. I was continually amazed that Huxley wrote this novel in
1931. Some of his prophecies are
surprisingly accurate, especially in terms of the progression of biological
science. Though we have not yet
(and hopefully never will) advanced to the point where children are born out of
bottles rather than wombs, he wasn’t too far off in terms of the science that
now allows in-vitro fertilization and other modern miracles.
His world is also populated by the usual futuristic
technologies in terms of enormous skyscrapers and personal helicopters instead
of cars; it seems a common futuristic theme that we will abandon the roads and
take to the skies at some point.
His clever, satirical insight is also apparent in the influence of big
corporations and marketing. This new world is thriving because it is driven by
consumerism; for instance, the only sports allowed are those that require
expensive equipment, like Obstacle Golf.
In other ways, Huxley’s prophecies are way off. Writing this novel in 1931, he couldn’t
have possibly predicted the role that computers and digital technology would
play in the future, since they had not been invented yet. And, his novel is largely a warning
against some of the tenets of communism since that was seen as a threat at the
time. Interestingly, he wrote a
commentary on his novel called Brave New World Revisited in 1958 that was included in my copy of the book (I
haven’t finished that section yet).
Of course, in 1958, communism was seen as even more of a threat to
democracy and freedom, and tiny, computerized devices inserted into every
aspect of our society were still a long way off.
I have gotten so engrossed in discussing this fascinating,
funny novel that I completely forgot to mention its status as a frequently
banned book. It’s easy to see why
the censors of our society want to ban this book. In this efficient future society, love and passion have been
eliminated, but casual sex is not only encouraged but required (though there is
nothing graphic in the book).
Quite logically, the founders of this society recognized that normal
human sex drive is something that could create passion, and, therefore,
instability, so they dealt with that hazard by making sex something very
ordinary and a conventional part of daily life. They removed the taboo of sex (and also its procreational
aspect) so that it could no longer cause any disturbance in society.
Not only did I enjoy reading Brave New World, but, as you can see from my lengthy review, I was
dying to discuss it with other people!
I do wish I had read it for a high school class, since I was one of
those freaks who loved discussing novels in my English classes! This is such a clever and
thought-provoking book that it begs to be discussed and analyzed. I’m so glad I finally got around to reading
this dystopian classic! Hmm….maybe
it’s time to go back and re-read 1984 now.
