I first read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in my freshman high school Honors English class, and at first I wasn’t sure how to process the story. But after rereading a few years later, it has become one of my favorite books.
The
dystopian story takes place in London, England in a time where family
has become obsolete and children are born from bottles. Sex and emotion
don’t go together anymore. People are bred into different intelligence castes to
perform different roles in society. People living by old ways are
considered savages. Henry Ford is their god. “Everyone belongs to
everyone else.” A look into what society could become.
The
book has quite a bit of controversy around it. The sexual exploits of
the novel have been considered “pornographic” by some. Others have
claimed it is anti-family and anti-religion. Huxley eventually came
back to the novel and did Brave New World Revisited
in the late 50s, in which he estimated whether society was moving more
towards the vision he saw in the novel or farther away. He concluded we
had moved closer to that vision faster than he previously thought. An
interesting observation given that that occurred quite a while ago, and you
could argue society has come close to Huxley’s vision today. What would
he say about the world now if he saw it?
The
reason I enjoy the novel so much is the dystopian element. So much of
that society is reflective of what we live in today, yet so much is
different. The family is still valued, but sexual freedom has become
far more prevalent. We have a type of cast society based on wealth not
intelligence, but we haven’t started mass producing offspring in
bottles.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.” pg. 22
“They’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.” pg.22 (as if books are dangerous! what nonsense!)
“A man can smile and smile and be a villain.” pg. 132
“One
of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and
symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to
inflict on our enemies.” pg. 179
“No, of course it isn’t necessary. But some kind of baseness are nobly undergone, I’d like to undergo something nobly. Don’t you see?” pg. 190
“He
was a philosopher, if you know what that was.” “A man who dreams of
fewer things than there are in heaven and earth.” pg. 231
My
quote list could continue on for ages. Since the concept and Huxley’s
style of writing are so wonderful to me, the book holds too much to try
and put down. While some consider the topics enclosed in Huxley’s story
taboo or inappropriate, I think nowadays it is more accurate to say
people should be offended by it because that is what they’ve become.
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