Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Brave New World
Book Review: All Too Real
Summary: 5 Stars
Sobering. What was merely creepy 25 years ago in high school now has the frightening force of reality behind it--Huxley's prophecy is coming true. Though most everyone is familiar with the basics of the story, there was a wealth of detail that had escaped my first reading. When the pain is taken away, society becomes a giant feedback loop--seeking nothing but sensation.
Huxley's Brave New World portrays a society devoid of pain and purpose--he argues that his creation is the inevitable result of science untempered by morality. He hints that the exigency that led to the Brave New World was war and one cannot think of a more likely scenario. This is science-fiction that has utterly transcended its genre because of the clarity and accuracy of its vision that an uncontrolled science would lead to tampering with life itself. Birth control, the abandonment of "traditional" morality, recreational drugs without side effects, and genetic engineering were all foreseen by this book from 1932.
It is interesting to note that genetic tampering is currently rather benign--we select for good looks, intelligence and hope to create a genome free from annoying defects like proclivity to cancer and other diseases. Yet through his character Mustapha Mond, Huxley argues that you can't make a civilization of alphas thereby affording a justification for the purposeful impairment of the majority of the population. Huxley's alphas have to buy into the system because they are smart enough to know otherwise. If they don't, society banishes them to an island--which, in reality, is a prize bestowed only on the true thinkers. The utter triumph of the society is manifested in the fact that there is no escape. Though well-aware of the sacrifices attendant to the world order, Mustapha Mond accepts his role based upon the idea that the highest goal of mankind is freedom from pain, obligation and choices.
And, presciently, that is the promise of every politician. The world is losing an appreciation for the value of pain, the satisfaction of labor and the value of choices. Huxley saw it coming in 1932 and the conclusion that the world is heading down that path becomes inescapable with only the slightest reference to contemporary events.
P.S. This "P.S." edition provides several excellent documents after the text of the novel such as a letter from Huxley to Orwell and a contemporary analysis of the work. The editors chose for maximum effect those documents that highlight the importance of the work in our culture. I am going to seek out more of these editions.
Book Review: Almost a Perfect World
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was truly amazing at certain points i was so touched by what i was reading that i was forced to read out loud just to hear these words spoken, Huxley takes commend of the english langage as no other author and creates an almost perfect world if only the savages were included. If this is what the future holds i welcome it with open arms a sad truth.Book Review: An Amazing Book
Summary: 4 Stars
I really admired reading Brave New World, Aldous Huxley brings life to each one of characters and brings the reader into a world where normal human desires such as, the human interaction, human abilities to reason or to argue, beliefs, human's intelligences. The human's physical longings such as the attraction to the opposite sex, and also the human communication doesn't longer matter in this new world that Huxley creates.
The novel opens at Central London Hatching Conditioning Centre factory, where the director and Hatchery is giving a tour to a group of children who are learning about the society in which they live in and how it is the way it is. Within the tour the boys discover that this factory isn't a normal factory, this factory creates human embryos for the World State. This embryos are categorized in five different castes called Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. Each castes are trained to obtain a certain role within the society, such as leadership or menial labor but one characteristic each castles posses, is the loss of real human emotions, attachments, intellectually, and the ability for self reasoning.
This World State is located in London and its the new world, everything outside of it is considered savage reservations, one man named Bernard Marx who is seen as one of the leaders in this new World State questions his own beliefs about the society in which he lives in, which forces him to take a trip to one of the savage reservation in New Mexico, this is where he encounters the protagonist, john. John is considered to be normal within the world that we live in today, he has the ability to reason, choose beliefs, resist sexually desires and to be his own person, a real human being.
Bernard Marx takes John out of the savage reservation and into this World State,once John arrives he starts to realize that this World State is utopia on earth, the World State civilization is controlled by soma (soma is a chemical spry that takes away the humanly emotions, such as fear, sadness, pain, hurt, everything that makes us human). The ability to be intelligent no longer exists in this civilization. "Christianity without tears--that's what soma" is.
Within the world State John struggles to live and understand this new society and the means to be free, to be a human being, to long for real danger, goodness, and the ability to express real emotions such as tears and happiness.
In my life the only thing that makes me human is the ability to be hurt, sad, afraid, excited, and weary; this are my emotions. Without emotions I would not be able to fall in love, enjoy books or movies, or anything that makes life wroth living. If I was john brought to this World State I too would struggle to finding where I belong and eventually would lead me to insanity. In a society where people are created without any personal freedoms and without the ability to have emotions, that society will never stand strong but instead collapse to the ground.
Book Review: An Amazing Social Commentary
Summary: 4 Stars
There are so many themes in this book Man vs. Society and conformity vs. individualism the scary thing is I found myself agreing with many of the philosophy's of the book.Book Review: An essential building block
Summary: 5 Stars
One of a few masterpieces oft cited to illustrate the definition of "dystopia," written as a satirical warning against a frightening future, much of the utopia that "Brave New World" describes is (scarily) already here, or soon to be. As a minimum, no one should be allowed to be born in a capitalistic society before having read this entertaining and well written novel.