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Book Review: Brave New World (1932)

[ 8 / 10 ] Brave New World is a marvelously imaginative look into Aldous Huxley's pessimistic view of the future. It belongs to a rare set of classic dystopias (along with "1984" and "We"), and with good reason - it is one of the most complete and disturbing illustrations of an oppressed society that can be found in all of literature. The book is saturated with a contempt for the ever-increasing grip of technology on society, and with the use of wit and sarcasm Huxley casts a piercing eye on the present by examining the future toward which we are heading. Like "1984", this novel has not aged a bit - it is as edgy and poignant as when it was written over 70 years ago...

The story of "Brave New World" is not so much centered on a person as it is a place - London, as it will be over 500 years from now. You will probably notice that the novel is light on character development - but what it lacks in interesting characters, it makes up for in the completeness of the technical imagery. Down to the last detail, Huxley paints us a picture of a world defined by industrialism run amok.

One of the funniest things about the novel - a joke that persists frequently throughout the book - is society's obsession with Henry Ford. Time is defined as AF - "After Ford". Every common mention of God in current culture is replaced by Ford. Men of respectable position are addressed as "Your Fordship". Clearly we see Huxley's opinion on Ford's contributions to society! It is this kind of sarcasm which is prevalent throughout the story.

As I alluded to earlier, Huxley's imagination is astonishing. In his future, the process of living life has become a science. Babies are not born, they are "decanted" from test tubes. The whole process of prenatal development is a strong mockery of the assembly-line theory of industrialism: thousands of test tubes, proceeding on conveyer belts, receiving injections and supplements at various, specified intervals. Every test tube is socially predestined to one of five classes based on society's need - these classes form a strict hierarchical caste. The idea of the family has been abolished; indeed, words such as mother and father are "pornographic". Children are raised carefully and precisely by society itself, and are provided every need according to their class. This includes "hypnopedia" (the process of teaching social truisms by repetitiously playing tape recordings during sleep), and the development of sexual education and practice as early as toddler-age. This is a world driven by stability and hedonistic pleasure.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this world is soma, a drug coveted by all members of society. Essentially it is a depressant with none of the harmful side-effects. It is distributed in daily rations and is depended on by society to relieve them of their problems. Life is carefully planned to be without any negativity - but in the rare case where something unpleasant happens, just take some soma and go on a "holiday from your problems". Between the social engineering and soma, society lives in blissful ignorance of anything except for simple pleasures, with no need for serious thought. It is a world just as frightening as that of Orwell's "1984", yet in a completely different way.

Huxley devotes a large portion of the book just to describing this world, and rightfully so - there is a lot here to explore, and he clearly has a lot to condemn. In one sense the focus of the book is just to make us aware of this future world, and clue us in to the fact that we are heading for it. He introduces controversial issues - caste systems, hedonism, society vs. the individual - but he forces you to ponder the issues yourself, rather than have his characters guide you along. This is not to say that there are not characters in the world, they just tend to take a backseat to the author's descriptive nature. For the first part of the book we alternatively follow two individuals - Lenina Crowne, a beautiful girl who (like everyone else) blissfully glides through her life, and Bernard Marx, an upper-crust young man who has never been content with society and is only just starting to manifest that concern. Their relationship is frustrating, and is what you might expect from a collision between the present and future worlds.

There are two particularly interesting characters we meet later. Mustapha Mond, who is one of the Controllers of society (one of the foremost leaders in the world), who is devoted to the society he controls yet at one time despised its uniformity. The most important character is John, who lives in a "Savage Reservation", where people still live according to the old ways. His exodus from the reservation and introduction into the new world result in the manifestation of inner conflicts which are fascinating and distressing to watch. John is most representative of us, and thus he is the closest thing we have to a protagonist and a voice of reason.

It is fascinating to see the similarities and differences between "1984" and this novel. While the former focuses on how political power and oppressive terror will subdue the masses, the latter suggests that social engineering and drugs will subdue us into an ignorant, semi-lobotomized form of stability. Orwell's weapon of choice is the powerful veracity of his writing; Huxley employs a subtle (yet just as powerful) wit and biting sarcasm. Yet in both, the end is the same - the people are hopelessly oppressed by society, and most are unaware of their plight. The few that stand out against the crowd are systematically eliminated. Both seem convinced that it's not a question of whether such horrors will occur, but when, assuming things don't change.

Personally, I preferred "1984" between the two, simply because it affected me more profoundly. Yet this does not take anything away from the beauty of what Aldous Huxley has created here - he has managed to deliver one of the darkest pictures of the future veiled by a thin mask of a satisfied and pacified society. It is a carefully-constructed dystopia that is well worth a read.