Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Brave New World
Book Review: ETA on time; wonderful piece for my H.S. classes
Summary: 5 Stars
for five years I've been using the cassettes of York narrating this novel, using it for my high school classes. It's been enlightening my students and I wanted to upgrade to CD'sBook Review: Required Reading
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the best books I have ever read, it is brilliant and funny and best of all, scary truthful. This is the book that makes you realize why you ever rebelled against that geometry teacher in high school, why you chose to think about what you wanted to do with your life rather than just following the prescribed path.
It is a wonderful, lovely, and yes, frightening book about what can happen when we stop questioning how we choose to live our lives, and let others make those decisions for us.
This book should be required reading in every school, in every country.
Book Review: If you think people are basically stupid-but you're smart you'll love this book.
Summary: 5 Stars
The difference between the society in "Brave New World" and 1984's society is that "Brave New World's" might actually work. The society in "Brave New World" is based on the assumption that humans-as a whole will do everything possible to avoid discomfort, pain and sadness. They will even give up their freedom and individualism in the name of happiness.
I think this is true. Look at the drug use in this country. Although drugs are important tools, they are both legally (anti-depressants, anti-anxiety) and illegally abused.
It is socially acceptable in this country to be addicted to TV and pharmaceuticals---as long as it doesn't affect your productivity at work it's not a problem.
Excellent book-probably more relevant today in the age of anti-depressants than it was 80 years ago.
Book Review: Funny, Scary, Tragic, Unusual Future
Summary: 4 Stars
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is in many ways a paradoxical world: comically tragic, organized chaos, perfectly imperfect, a living and breathing oxymoron. There are several key players within the story--John (The Savage), Bernard Marx, Linda (John's mother), Lenina Crowe, Mustapha Mond, and Hermholz Watson. Much of the story is told from the point of view of Bernard, an Alpha male who is displeased with the structure of society and eventually talks Lenina into going to visit the "savage" society. While there, Bernard winds up meeting John, a "savage" who has many characteristics that make him a deep thinker and philosophical about man's existence. Bernard eventually talks John into making the trip to "civilized" London, an upside down utopia where babies and humans are "created", emotion is suppressed or avoided altogether, the collective is favored over the individual, and progress is stressed.
Huxley has an imaginative method of illustrating this new world. The topsy-turvy dystopia establishes that words such as "mother", "father" and "love" have no real use. Passion is ignored in favor of progression. Huxley comically and intentionally depicts "norms" of this shocking society. Without the basic idea of family or relationships between couples, people seem more like organisms than flesh and blood. Huxley perhaps was making a point about the times, maybe his society, maybe ours.
One of the more disturbing aspects to the world is the ideology of illusion serving to be the method for fixing one's problems or difficulties. Nearly all the characters escape from the world they live in by taking the hallucinogenic drug soma, designed to make them forget a troubling encounter or experience by travelling far away from the present. John, considered to be the "savage", is the only one willing to break from this practice while also actively trying to convince others of its wrongs. While others escape with soma, he escapes into reading Shakespeare, a form of therapy from this mad existence. Towards the end of the novel, John, while debating with Mustapha Mond (a Controller, vehemently tries to protest this "Brave New World" thinking: "Whether `tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing them...But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy." Soma seems to be a symbolic surrender, a post-modern easy button to life in the Brave New World. John's frustration with many of the people in this circle is that they are so brainwashed that they cannot even grasp his protests; he cannot convince them that there is another way to think. This is what eventually is John's undoing: he tries to seek refuge from this existence, this way of life, but there is no changing, no escaping, and no going back. Created in Huxley's work is an ironic confederation of idleness, the societal emptiness described eloquently by Mustapha Mond: "In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise."
If there was one element I didn't care for, it was the first part. While the first fifty pages or so set the scene for the new civilization, where the five castes of society are introduced and the background is set for the futuristic society, I found them to be a bit tedious. The novel really takes off when Part two begins, and we meet some of the aforementioned main characters. I only reveal this fact because some may lose patience in the beginning of their reading; if you stick with it, I think you'll be much more interested once the plot gets going.
This is a scary, original, and ironic ride into the future. Which future? That's for you to decide.
Book Review: STANDING THE TEST OF TIME
Summary: 5 Stars
BRAVE NEW WORLD - EACH OF THESE PAST TWO WINTERS I HAVE GONE ON A YOGA RETREAT TO MAUI AND EACH TIME I HAVE READ A CLASSIC PIECE OF LITERATURE. LAST YEAR IT WAS `TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD', AND THIS LAST RETREAT IN FEB '08 I READ BRAVE NEW WORLD. BY PAGE TWO I WAS HOOKED BY THE DARK HUMOR WHEN THE FUTURE VOICES WERE REFERRING TO `OUR FORD' AND `IN THE YEAR OF OUR FORD'. HARD TO BELIEVE THAT ALDOUS HUXLEY WROTE THIS IN 1932. HIS PREDICTIONS OF HOW DEPENDENT SOCIETY WILL BECOME ON MACHINES AND DRUGS WAS QUITE AN ACCURATE VISION. IN RESEARCHING A BIT OF HISTORY ON THIS WORK I LEARNED THAT IT WAS NOT RECEIVED WELL BY CRITICS IN 1932, YET IT'S CHILLING PREMISE HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIME.
THE STORY STARTS OFF AS STUDENTS ARE SHOWN AROUND A FERTILIZING FACILITY WHERE MASS PREGNANCIES IN TUBES ARE MONITERED AND DIFFERENT TYPES OF PEOPLE ARE CREATED TO SERVE IN DIFFERENT CAPACITIES (ie-a caste system). WE GET TO KNOW A SMALL CAST OF CHARACTERS , BUT IT IS BERNARD MARX, A SUB AVERAGE ALPHA, THAT IS SHOWING SIGNS OF DISCONTENTMENT THAT PROPELS OUR STORY ALONG.
HE TAKES A TRIP TO AN ANCIENT INDIAN RESERVATION WHERE THE PEOPLE STILL MARRY EACH OTHER, BELIEVE IN JESUS, AND....WHERE ONE WOMAN FROM HIS SOCIETY WAS LEFT YEARS BEFORE, MATED WITH A LOCAL AND PRODUCED A SON WHOSE ONLY REAL FORM OF EDUCATION WAS A HUGE VOLUME OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
THIS `SAVAGE' IS BROUGHT BACK TO LONDON AND DISPLAYED FOR ALL TO SEE AND WHEN HIS VOICE AND THOUGHTS ARE HEARD.....WELL, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. IF YOU HAD TO READ THIS IN SCHOOL AND DIDN'T PAY MUCH ATTENTION, OR IF YOU HAVEN'T, LIKE ME, READ IT AT ALL....YOU SHOULD.