Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Paul
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1932
rating: 3
read at: 2012/02/24
date added: 2012/02/25
shelves: classic, novel
review:
Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World, due to an uninteresting sequence of academic mishaps, was never an assignment for me in school. However, the promise of an early work of dystopian characterization was something that had intrigued me since I saw some peers carrying it around in high school so after much delay I finally decided to check it out.
Brave New World is set in a future world where civilization is divided into castes based on birthright. All infants are ‘decanted’ in a sort of laboratory environment and lower castes are populated by large batches of identical multiples (actually the term “twin” is misused in the book) while upper classes (Alphas and Betas) are also manufactured but in a more naturalistic single embryonic state (i.e. they are individuals as opposed to functional clones). A form of sleep hypnosis is used as a form of conditioning to drum societal morals into the populace and the civilians, regardless of caste, exist in a kind of regimented consumerized infancy, encouraged to pursue id-inflected pastimes like complicated, manufacturing-friendly recreation, casual sex, social bonding via ritualistic orgy, and heavy drug use when not fulfilling their societal labor obligations. In this society, individualism, family structures and especially natural parentage are considered so outdated as to be crass or pornographic.
Against this background we are introduced to Lenina, a popular, prototypical Alpha girl and Bernard, an Alpha boy who is dissatisfied with civilization and infatuated to a degree with Lenina. The first part of the book establishes the context of Huxley’s dystopia and lays the groundwork for Lenina and Bernard’s trip to New Mexico where they vacation in an uncivilized Native American reservation and are introduced to John (also referred to as The Savage).
John is a bastard whose mother was from civilized London and was accidentally left in the company of the Natives some eighteen years prior, impregnated and injured. Her transition into the lifestyle of the tribe has been marginally successful at best and John has felt himself an outsider in the only world he’s ever known since birth, but has also grown up hearing his mother’s tales of modern life. When Bernard finds himself stricken with John’s potential as a unique artifact and arranges to have him and his mother brought back to London, the stage is set for the book’s final act in which John disrupts and questions the standards established in the new world and ultimately seeks to forge his own tragic path.
As a novel, Brave New World is kind of messy, I thought. The structuring of it means that the actual protagonist of the story, John, isn’t even introduced until halfway in and the remaining characters who carry the first half don’t really have much in the way of complete arcs. The plot is pretty sketchy overall, and you can see how Huxley’s nods to decency as he lampoons an indecent world struggle to convey a true sense of the nightmare he’s trying to set forth. It comes across (perhaps only modernly?) as a timid book that is trying to be courageous and outrageous which minimizes the overall impact. I suppose eighty years ago when the book was published it might have been downright scandalous but for all the talk I’ve heard about the book being as resonant today as when it was contemporary, I feel that in a world where Chuck Palahniuk publishes regularly, this isn’t shocking in the least.
As social satire, it works pretty well I think. I got the points Huxley was making about promiscuity and the dissolution of core social structures like family; I understood the fearmongering about industry and modernization/mechanization; I saw the validity of the concerns over disintegration of interest in promoting individualism and critical thinking, literacy and the like. It’s not exactly subtle, though, so saying I grasped the point isn’t actually saying that much.
As a dystopian vision, I’m not quite sure what to think. It’s certainly no 1984, for one thing, in terms of effective realization of the core ideas. Parts of Brave New World’s vision seem founded on some pretty shaky science which makes it into more of a wild fantasy to the modern reader. However, while 1984 outlines a path to ruination that is clear and observable, Brave New World is at times more haunting because it better describes how such societies could realistically emerge through the utter disenfranchisement and indifference of the populace. Which, for example, is more likely: The abolishment of books by an oppressive regime or the gradual decline of interest in books or of knowledge itself as fashionable characteristic? I think the popularity of drivel like Jersey Shore shows that Huxley may have been the more prescient. The fact that 1984 is constantly referenced (every political action these days seems destined to be decried by someone or another as being indicative of the inevitability of “Big Brother”) alone probably indicates that 1984 is an extreme which will never truly emerge, but the relative indifference of Brave New World might indicate that people are paying almost exactly as much attention as Huxley feared they might.
As a random aside, I will say that Brave New World gave me an interesting new perspective on another book I read recently, Lois Lowry‘s young adult novel, The Giver, which I now think of as a middle schooler’s intro to Huxley, for what it’s worth. I saw an awful lot of parallels between the two, especially in how the authority figures justified and rationalized even the social norms that were clearly divorced from innate human inclination (subversion of the family unit, for example).
So the bottom line to me is really that Brave New World is a middle-of-the-road work: Somewhat interesting, clumsy as a novel, feels a bit dated, containing some decent satire but really strong as a work of dystopian alarmism. I think the struggles it has as an actual story make it harder to recommend than something comparable but I’m definitely glad I read it and am now sadder than ever that I didn’t get the chance to have it discussed and dissected in a classroom environment.