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A review by mghoshlisbin
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
3.75
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin."
"In fact, " said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
While, at heart, a protest novel, Aldous Huxley may write one of the most enjoyable protest novels I have read in quite a while. Though Brave New World had been on my list of books to read for some time, I was pushed to finally pick it up because of Michel Houellebecq's clear adoration of Huxley in The Elementary Particles . It was incredibly accessible--so a good choice for someone who is trying to get into classics.
The novel follows a small set of characters: Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson, both misfit "Alphas" of a civilized society and John "the Savage", a medium between the uncivilized world and the "new world". The story is set in a futuristic world in which harmony and stability are prioritized by chemically diminishing all excessive emotion, individualistic thinking, monogamy, and procreation. Any indulgence in solitude or strong emotional attachments to a given person is deemed a sort of “solipsism” against the “social body,” in which “everyone belongs to everyone else.” This sanitized world is dominated by the use of a drug called soma which creates a fictional simulation of positive emotion, drowning out any negative feeling. This, in conjunction with "scent organs" and "feelies" creates a wholly sanitized world that is controlled by a government of elite exceptions to the rule.
I think I was most fascinated by the Bokanovsky armies that are created and conditioned through sleep training. From a more modern perspective, the sleep conditioning feels eerily similar to the ways in which we passively consume social media. While exaggerated, modern psychologists suggest that the regular and constant use of social media can be detrimental to critical thinking, perfect for creating the "happy" but malleable populace that is central to Huxley's novel. Furthermore, the work of the Epsilon, or lowest echelon, caste, is monitored such that they "enjoy" it.
John, the "civilized Savage" who is of both worlds, is destined to fail in his journey to liberate civilized society to individual emotional freedom. Though I think this aspect of the novel is perhaps it's weakest point, I do acknowledge that the imagery in the final whipping scene is immensely powerful, and has been pulled into many modern scenes of horror (think: Midsommar and the scene in which the cult wives cry and scream in tandem with Dani's panic attack).
Wholly engrossing, powerful themes, if a bit on the nose. It is difficult to determine whether I feel this way because I have been exposed to iterations of Huxley's ideas in modern media/literature, or whether the writing itself was less genius than implied.
"In fact, " said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
While, at heart, a protest novel, Aldous Huxley may write one of the most enjoyable protest novels I have read in quite a while. Though Brave New World had been on my list of books to read for some time, I was pushed to finally pick it up because of Michel Houellebecq's clear adoration of Huxley in The Elementary Particles . It was incredibly accessible--so a good choice for someone who is trying to get into classics.
The novel follows a small set of characters: Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson, both misfit "Alphas" of a civilized society and John "the Savage", a medium between the uncivilized world and the "new world". The story is set in a futuristic world in which harmony and stability are prioritized by chemically diminishing all excessive emotion, individualistic thinking, monogamy, and procreation. Any indulgence in solitude or strong emotional attachments to a given person is deemed a sort of “solipsism” against the “social body,” in which “everyone belongs to everyone else.” This sanitized world is dominated by the use of a drug called soma which creates a fictional simulation of positive emotion, drowning out any negative feeling. This, in conjunction with "scent organs" and "feelies" creates a wholly sanitized world that is controlled by a government of elite exceptions to the rule.
I think I was most fascinated by the Bokanovsky armies that are created and conditioned through sleep training. From a more modern perspective, the sleep conditioning feels eerily similar to the ways in which we passively consume social media. While exaggerated, modern psychologists suggest that the regular and constant use of social media can be detrimental to critical thinking, perfect for creating the "happy" but malleable populace that is central to Huxley's novel. Furthermore, the work of the Epsilon, or lowest echelon, caste, is monitored such that they "enjoy" it.
John, the "civilized Savage" who is of both worlds, is destined to fail in his journey to liberate civilized society to individual emotional freedom. Though I think this aspect of the novel is perhaps it's weakest point, I do acknowledge that the imagery in the final whipping scene is immensely powerful, and has been pulled into many modern scenes of horror (think: Midsommar and the scene in which the cult wives cry and scream in tandem with Dani's panic attack).
Wholly engrossing, powerful themes, if a bit on the nose. It is difficult to determine whether I feel this way because I have been exposed to iterations of Huxley's ideas in modern media/literature, or whether the writing itself was less genius than implied.