Brave New World is a classic written to make its readers uncomfortable. It accomplishes its point well. Still, it is only getting 3 stars from me, as I rate books based on my personal level of enjoyment rather than literary value. The characters of this book were not meant to be likeable - I am fine with that concept. The first few chapters made me want to curl up in the corner and cry - that's how repulsive the design of this universe was mission accomplished, Mr.
But as we plunge int Brave New World is a classic written to make its readers uncomfortable. But as we plunge into the depths of the neverending moral message of the story basically the entire last third of the book , I felt my patience stretching thin. I get the message, no need to beat me over the head with it. I did chuckle at the ridiculous consumerism of this world inspired by America of the turn of the century in which, unexpectedly, most characters have distinct socialist names - Lenina, Trotsky, Marx, Bernard as in G.
I just think it's funny how both of the enemies of Huxley's ideal world - the competing ideologies of socialism and rampant consumerism - were dealt with in one blow. Good try - but come on! I liked the description of the effects of soma drug on the mind. No wonder, as this was written by the author of The Doors of Perception about mescaline effects on the mind - an interesting read, by the way.
Of the classic trio of dystopian books this one, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Zamyatin's We this one is my least favorite We is the best, in my opinion, and may have actually inspired this one. Brave New World succeeds at portraying dystopia at its worst and making the reader think, but stilted language and moral heavy-handedness take away from the enjoyment. Yet it's a classic, and should be read, even if not for fun. View all 19 comments. I think I read it wrong. Because my first thought upon finishing this was this: Where the hell do I sign up for this Brave New World?
Basically, this society is missing religion, shame, sin, misery, fear, disease, and classic books. Now, that's not to say life is perfect in this utopia. Nobody gets married and has kids anymore. I know, a lot of you are thinking that isn't quite the downside that the book thinks it is.
No more monogamy? Whatever would we do? The new people are grown in test tu I think I read it wrong. The new people are grown in test tubes. There are the dumb ones who do the menial shit, the average ones who do the office stuff, and the smarter ones who run the show. Can you imagine if people were actually set up to be in charge by nothing more than a coincidence of birth?
That's some crazy sci-fi caste shenanigans right there. So what we have here is job security, free drugs that don't have side effects and make you feel good, non-judgemental sex, no conflict, no health issues till you die, and no barky religious folks knocking on your door at 9 am on a Saturday.
And what are you missing out on, pray tell? I've read his stuff, and I can say without a doubt that I could skip it and make do with a Micheal Bay movie. Fair warning, no one has ever accused me of being someone they aspire to emulate. Even the evil overlord in charge of it all wasn't that bad of a dude. When these guys met him and confronted him with their doubts as to how well they actually enjoyed their place in society, he just sent them to an island full of like-minded individuals so they could do what they wanted without disrupting the flow of things.
He was kind of like, yeah, this isn't for everyone and sent them off with a wave of his chill hand. For the entire book, I kept waiting for the Soylent Green is People moment, but it never really came. To me, that world did not appear worse than ours in any significant way. The only weird thing was that being a mother or father was shameful and no one was monogamous.
That's not exactly the most horrifying thing I've ever heard happening in a dystopian novel. Especially if the other option is to be like John, who flogged himself every time he got a boner over cute little Lenina.
I kept waiting for some sort of redemption arc for this savage wherein he stopped being a complete asshat, but that didn't happen.
He was creepy as fuck right up till the end. And what an ending it was. Once there, he prays to some weird mash-up of Christian and Native American gods, flogs himself daily, and tries his darndest to make his life as hard and unbearable as he can. Because suffering for no reason whatsoever is what makes life good?
Bottom line, he's so batshit that tourists start showing up at his doorstep to watch him act the fool. But it's not till Lenina gets there and tries to embrace him that he loses his damn mind. He tries to attack her with his nasty little flogger and when he doesn't succeed, he just starts beating the fuck out of himself. And if that wasn't weird enough, he AND all the tourists end up getting turned on by his self-flagellation and have a massive orgy. John wakes up after his night of debauchery, can't deal with having busted a nut, and hangs himself.
The end. I'm still not sure what the moral of the story is here. Now, admittedly, I like the sound of the drugs and sex and fun holidays. I will say I think it was a bit of overkill to taze babies. Then again, sacrifices must be made for the greater good. I'm kidding!
Don't zap toddlers, you idiot. At the end of the day, I didn't really care for this book. I personally thought it was sort of boring. Not much happened plotwise and I never really felt invested in any of the characters. It seemed to me a bit of a daffy book that had a lot of fuckwit ideas of what would happen if we ignore the strict moral codes about sex found in most religions. I know this is a beloved novel and I don't think you're stupid if you enjoyed it.
Different strokes for different folks and all that. Michael York was the narrator of the audiobook I listened to, and I thought he did a fantastic job. Jun 25, Lisa rated it it was amazing Shelves: books-to-read-before-you-die. History, " he repeated slowly, "is bunk.
As I had forgotten the major plot of this dystopian novel written just when fascism emerged in the s, some fifteen years before the nuclear age, "You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk.
As I had forgotten the major plot of this dystopian novel written just when fascism emerged in the s, some fifteen years before the nuclear age, I spent a day rereading it with mixed emotions. Some things are almost prophetic in all their scary details, for example the efficiency of the childlike custom-made contributor to consumerist society: "Adults intellectually and during working hours", he went on.
The part of the plot I found difficult to swallow was the juxtaposition of the scientifically perfected "utopia" of drug-induced happiness with the dirty "natural" world of the savages, who follow absurdly ancient rituals. Their world, where "god" is still needed to balance their suffering and to help them accept ageing, hunger and pain, is like a black-and-white contrast foil.
Their need for self-denial in God-fearing doesn't generally differ much from the self-indulgence of the consumption society where soma takes care of controlling emotions and actions.
In either case, human beings are controlled, or conditioned, by a greater power, and they can fall back into a state of irresponsible acceptance of pleasure or pain, according to their choice - which of course is pre-destined by early childhood drilling.
Call me a hopeless idealist, but there is a third alternative! Human beings can be offered the freedom of choice if they learn to embrace diversity, knowledge and differences of individuals rather than the "utopian" goal of "sameness" of one kind or the other.
If sameness is the ultimate goal, any paradise will turn into hell, an automatic regression into robotic behaviour will follow, regardless of the oppressive dictatorship that imposes it consumerism and religious doctrine are quite the same in Brave New World. Interestingly, Huxley himself commented on the problematic binary world he had created when he reflected on his novel in His third option, to decentralise power and encourage individual freedom, is still a work in progress in our historical bunk era, and his two dystopian visions have merged into one.
The worship of His Fordship, the consumerist god of the capitalist world, has been combined with ancient religious rites serving as soma for some people, while others take the more direct approach of over-consumption of food and fun and drug intake against meaninglessness.
It made me think of another novel showing two juxtaposed oppressive systems, Things Fall Apart. British colonial rule, with all its religious and social implications, stands against the ancient rites of the Nigerian past, which to me would constitute just as much of a dictatorship against my personal wishes.
Two opposing, rigid systems leaving no individual freedom, two doctrines that condemn whatever is different from their own specific tradition. Zero tolerance for individual differences. No compromise or combination possible. It is either or. No third or fourth option. Margaret Atwood in her MaddAddam at least insisted that her new deity "Oh Fuck" should only be called upon in emergencies.
I finish reading Brave New World with the feeling that it is time to call on Atwood's god, for the bravest and newest of worlds is in danger. The devil is in the sameness, as is god. For they are the same thing, utopia and dystopia being completely identical, turning humans into Epsilon Semi-Morons, children or robots.
Even Shakespeare can be destroyed by application in banal situations. If history is bunk, everything is always new and brave. But also meaningless. Oh Fuck! View all 23 comments.
Dec 20, Dan Schwent rated it really liked it Shelves: books , In a dystopian society of genetically engineered consumers pacified by drugs and conditioning, Bernard Marx cannot seem to fit in. When he visits a Savage reservation, his eyes are opened and he brings one of the savages back to England with him As I continue my bleak science fiction parade toward the new year, I wonder why I've never read Brave New World before.
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley takes on consumerism, the media, genetic engineering, recreational drugs, religion, herd mentality, In a dystopian society of genetically engineered consumers pacified by drugs and conditioning, Bernard Marx cannot seem to fit in. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley takes on consumerism, the media, genetic engineering, recreational drugs, religion, herd mentality, individualism, and lots of other socially relevant topics, weaving them into a science fiction setting that our world resembles more every day.
The setting and society are the stars of the show in Brave New World. The people live in a caste system based on genetics, conditioned from birth and pacified by drugs, living to consume goods and take soma to forget their troubles. Free love is encouraged but free thinking is not. Bernard Max can't seem to get with the program and winds up nearly causing a revolution. The characters are pretty secondary to the setting but it wasn't hard to feel sorry for Bernard, the square peg in a world of round holes.
Even when he gets a measure of fame, he still can't manage to shake the feeling that something's wrong. John the Savage provides a nice contrast, an outsider looking in on a world everyone else sees as normal but he sees as hellish. Huxley may not have thought so at the time but he may have been a futurist. Our culture seems to be moving in the direction of Brave New World all the time. The rampant consumerism, lowest common denominator entertainment, and herd mentality all seem a little too familiar.
Is the internet our soma? Things to ponder There are some classics that are as hard to read as an insurance policy written in Klingon and then there are ones like this. Brave New World is very readable and not at all dense. The ideas are very easy to absorb, especially in this day and age. In these uncertain times, Brave New World is as timely as ever. Four and a half stars. View all 20 comments. View all 3 comments. Mar 30, Kaylin The Re-Read Queen rated it did not like it Shelves: didn-t-finish , unpopular-opinions , classics , dystopia.
I'm a peabrain pleb and this is truly a classic and how dare I? I understand what it's trying to do. I understand the over-enthusiasm for science and the depersonalization. I understand how showing a thriving world devoid of relationships and emotions feels counterintuitive and wrong.
I understand how ground-breaking this was. I understand it raises all sorts of questions and opens discussions about free will, societal control, the role of government and what humanity is.
But it's not for me. This is incredibly dense as the entire first half has been dedicated to showing the science and structure of this 'brave new world. I mean kinda? It all feels dedicated to driving the same few points home.
I understand. But I'm bored. And I'm tired of the shock-factor of orgies and children engaging in "erotic play" This really could have been a short-story and it would have accomplished the same things Jan 10, Markus rated it it was ok Shelves: team-rocket , social-criticism , , classics , dystopia. There is little doubt that Brave New World is a genre classic, heavily contributing to defining the dystopian genre. Unfortunately, I found nothing to appreciate about it.
Maybe my general distaste for dystopia hit me like a wave. That is certainly a possible explanation. Maybe I was too stunned by the elegance and the hauntingly powerful message sent by , which, in my humble opinion, is a far better book than this. To me, this was a very slow book containing completely uninteresting characters, an unrealistic dystopian scenario, and writing that was neither engaging nor enchanting.
I would have stopped reading long ago were it not for the fact that this book is such a classic. That is also why I am giving it a higher rating than what I feel it deserves. Because it was an important book when it was first released, because it has remained so through the years, and because it contributed to building the foundation that so many later books of considerably higher quality now stand on.
View all 24 comments. Oct 30, Federico DN rated it liked it. In a distant utopian future, society reaches its maximum ideal. Advanced technology, limitless overabundance, poverty disappearance, end of violence. Well-being at the reach of a pill. Everyone is happy. Everyone gets what they want, when and how they want it.
Everybody belongs to everyone. Genetically altered from birth, each person learns to live under certain conditionings.
And they are perfectly happy, within those parameters and capacit In a distant utopian future, society reaches its maximum ideal. And they are perfectly happy, within those parameters and capacities.
But when a variable goes wrong, stability becomes hard to achieve. In this perfect world, Bernard Max tries to find a place in a society he does not feel he belongs, Lenina Crowne tries to overcome feelings she should not have, and John Savage struggles with his desire Interesting from time to time, but sometimes, not so much. Mixed feelings. Overall an enjoyable read. An all-time classic, and a pillar of dystopian fiction. Still remaining, two movies based on the book and Todos son felices.
Todos tienen lo que quieren, cuando quieren, cuanto quieren. Todos pertenecen a todos. Interesante de a ratos, a veces no tanto. Sentimientos cruzados. Dentro de todo una lectura pasable.
View 1 comment. Nov 15, Leo. What are they up to? Is this paradigm changing? On this Earth, do we really belong? Will we inherit, this beautiful garden of Life, and Love and Compassion? Are these Puppet Masters, going out of fashion? Is the game up? The lifting of this Veil Are we awakening, from an old, fading, weakening Spell?
Am I an Assassin? A Lord? A Sir? A Priest? A Monk? A Usurper? A Slaver? A Satanist? A Mystic? A Druid? A Mage? A Kabbalist? A King? A Prince? An Earl or a Duke?
A Freemason? I am none of these things but, I know who they are and what they do, I am Leo They are they, and we are them. Expect us. Who are the politicians? What do they do? Are they like many tics, crawling over me and you? Do they help society? Help the likes of you and me? Are they bringing in secret courts? To split up the happy family? Do they build infrastructure? Organise education for the young? Or are they many tics? Since civilization begun? Do they manage the health system?
Build homes for the needy? Are they bowing to the lobbyists? The puppet masters? The Greedy? Are they there for the people, the common, the sheep?
Or are they many tics, crawling over the dumbed down and asleep? Is the House Of Commons only for show? Where many tics babble on, and to and fro The power is in the inner circle, higher on the pyramid structure, above With no compassion, empathy, care, understanding or love Are the higher echelons esoteric?
The inner court? Dark corridors of power, to the common, forbidden Where Lords and Sirs and Dames and Earls and Ladies entertain Royalty Anything goes, unimaginable, these sycophants show nothing but, loyalty Some are born into it, nepotism is rife, so wrong Like families Clinton, and Bush, two sides of the same coin, all along Who is a Policeman?
Or Policewoman? What is she or he? A single parasite, a lice, to likes of you and me Not there to aid you, on the contrary The copper, is to enforce the law, put up an invisable wall, hemming in society Give you a ticket, harassment, inconvenience, for your security, your safety Yet a terrorist can easily blow up a building, walk straight in, unnoticed, free Who is a soldier? Don a uniform, become part of a collective, for me and you Obey orders, even though their conscience is crying out Do they cringe when the drill sergeant, in their face does shout?
Not allowed to answer back, the mind control works, it conspires Turning young men and women into complete and utter Soul Dier's That is what a soldier is, a body without a soul, answering to a lord In the eyes of the Elites, a pawn upon a chequered board That is their job, to die, not return wounded or, maimed To come back to society, a burden, tamed A Royal soldier, really?
No help when they return home Spurned by Royalty, no help, issued with a medal though, then left all alone So many soldiers living on the street No income, no home, no food, trying to make ends meet Relying on charities, just to get by, diminishing fast Whilst Lords and Ladies sip champagne, just like in the past Bodies piling up in battles, fertilizer for the land A massive population cull, orchestrated by the hidden hand Or a mass sacrifice, spilling bucket loads of blood Just like in the days of Noah, before the Biblical Flood Do politicians help the masses?
The people? The mob? The Shunned Or are they merely prefects? Looking out for number one Self preservation, like Wormtongue, in the Lord Of The Rings, dancing to Saramon's song An Arse licker, a pet, a hanger on, hoping to belong So who are the politicians?
Some hailed this change as the beginning of true individual freedom, while others condemned it as the end of civilization itself. Huxley, with typical wit, uses the issue for irony, creating an image of the young Lenina being scolded for her lack of promiscuity. Sexual rules may change, Huxley tells his readers, but the power of convention remains the same. Although set in the future, then, Huxley's Brave New World is truly a novel of its time.
At a period of great change, Huxley creates a world in which all the present worrying trends have produced terrible consequences. Movement toward socialism in the s, for example, becomes, in Huxley's future, the totalitarian World State.
Questioning of religious beliefs and the growth of materialism, likewise, transforms into a religion of consumerism with Henry Ford as its god.
And if Model T's roll off the assembly line in the present, in a stream of identical cars, then in the future, human beings will be mass-produced, too. Huxley's future vision, by turns witty and disturbing, imagines the end of a familiar, traditional life and the triumph of all that is new and strange in the modern world.
In constructing an imaginary world, Huxley contributes to a long tradition — the utopian fiction. More used his fictional Utopia to point out the problems present in his own society. Since then, writers have created utopias to challenge readers to think about the underlying assumptions of their own culture. Gulliver's Travels , by Jonathan Swift, seems at first to be a book of outlandish travel stories. Yet throughout the narratives, Swift employs his fictional worlds ironically to make serious arguments about the injustices of his own Britain.
In utopian fiction, imagination becomes a way to explore alternatives in political, social, and religious life. In Huxley's time, the most popular writer of utopian fiction was H. Wells held an optimistic view of the future, with an internationalist perspective, and so his utopias reflected the end of national divisions and the growth of a truly humane civilization, as he saw it. When Huxley read Wells' Men Like Gods , he was inspired to make fun of its optimism with his characteristically ironic wit.
What began as a parody turned into a novel of its own — Brave New World. The brave new world of Huxley's novel is not a "good place," and so it is not, in the strictest terms, a utopia.
Huxley himself called his world a "negative utopia," the opposite of the traditional utopia. Which template would win, we wondered. During the cold war, Nineteen Eighty-Four seemed to have the edge.
But when the Berlin Wall fell in , pundits proclaimed the end of history, shopping reigned triumphant, and there was already lots of quasi-soma percolating through society. True, promiscuity had taken a hit from Aids, but on balance we seemed to be in for a trivial, giggly, drug-enhanced spend-o-rama: Brave New World was winning the race.
That picture changed, too, with the attack on New York's twin towers in Thoughtcrime and the boot grinding into the human face could not be got rid of so easily, after all.
The Ministry of Love is back with us, it appears, though it's no longer limited to the lands behind the former iron curtain: the west has its own versions now. On the other hand, Brave New World hasn't gone away. Shopping malls stretch as far as the bulldozer can see.
On the wilder fringes of the genetic engineering community, there are true believers prattling of the gene-rich and the gene-poor - Huxley's alphas and epsilons - and busily engaging in schemes for genetic enhancement and - to go one better than Brave New World - for immortality.
Would it be possible for both of these futures - the hard and the soft - to exist at the same time, in the same place? And what would that be like? Surely it's time to look again at Brave New World and to examine its arguments for and against the totally planned society it describes, in which "everybody is happy now". What sort of happiness is on offer, and what is the price we might pay to achieve it?
I first read Brave New World in the early s, when I was It made a deep impression on me, though I didn't fully understand some of what I was reading. It's a tribute to Huxley's writing skills that although I didn't know what knickers were, or camisoles - nor did I know that zippers, when they first appeared, had been denounced from pulpits as lures of the devil because they made clothes so easy to take off - I none the less had a vivid picture of "zippicamiknicks", that female undergarment with a single zipper down the front that could be shucked so easily: "Zip!
The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the right foot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as though deflated on the floor. I myself was living in the era of "elasticised panty girdles" that could not be got out of or indeed into without an epic struggle, so this was heady stuff indeed.
The girl shedding the zippicamiknicks is Lenina Crowne, a blue-eyed beauty both strangely innocent and alluringly voluptuous - or "pneumatic", as her many male admirers call her. Lenina doesn't see why she shouldn't have sex with anyone she likes whenever the occasion offers, as to do so is merely polite behaviour and not to do so is selfish.
Never were two sets of desiring genitalia so thoroughly at odds. And thereon hangs Huxley's tale. Brave New World is either a perfect-world utopia or its nasty opposite, a dystopia, depending on your point of view: its inhabitants are beautiful, secure and free from diseases and worries, though in a way we like to think we would find unacceptable.
Sir Thomas More, in his own 16th-century Utopia, may have been punning: utopia is the good place that doesn't exist. As a literary construct, Brave New World thus has a long list of literary ancestors. Plato's Republic and the Bible's book of Revelations and the myth of Atlantis are the great-great-grandparents of the form; nearer in time are More's Utopia, and the land of the talking-horse, totally rational Houyhnhnms in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and HG Wells's The Time Machine, in which the brainless, pretty "upper classes" play in the sunshine during the day, and the ugly "lower classes" run the underground machinery and emerge at night to eat the social butterflies.
In the 19th century - when improvements in sewage systems, medicine, communication technologies and transportation were opening new doors - many earnest utopias were thrown up by the prevailing mood of optimism, with William Morris's News from Nowhere and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward foremost among them.
Insofar as they are critical of society as it presently exists, but nevertheless take a dim view of the prospects of the human race, utopias may verge on satire, as do Swift's and More's and Wells's; but insofar as they endorse the view that humanity is perfectible, or can at least be vastly improved, they will resemble idealising romances, as do Bellamy's and Morris's.
The first world war marked the end of the romantic-idealistic utopian dream in literature, just as several real-life utopian plans were about to be launched with disastrous effects.
The Communist regime in Russia and the Nazi takeover of Germany both began as utopian visions. But as had already been discovered in literary utopias, perfectibility breaks on the rock of dissent. What do you do with people who don't endorse your views or fit in with your plans? Nathaniel Hawthorne, a disillusioned graduate of the real-life Brooke Farm utopian scheme, pointed out that the Puritan founders of New England - who intended to build the New Jerusalem - began with a prison and a gibbet.
Forced re-education, exile and execution are the usual choices on offer in utopias for any who oppose the powers that be.
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