Claiming the right to be unhappy (Brave New World - Aldous Huxley)

Member Name: fromage

Product:	Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Date:	18/05/01 (412 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Too numerous to list

Disadvantages: Too few to be worth mentioning

‘Brave New World’ is, in my opinion, the finest work of one of the finest authors of the century. The best thing about the book is that it makes you think. Not just that, of course, a lot of books challenge the intellect and imagination (every other book Huxley’s written, for a start), but ‘Brave New World’ not only makes you think, it also points you at the truth, by showing you what lies in the other direction. Only a very few works of the imagination are strong enough to do this, to fit an imperative moral message into a fictional narrative. The fact that it’s also very funny is just the icing on the cake.

The book is a vision of utopia. In six hundred years time the citizens of the civilised world shall be raised up in perfect safety, knowing nothing of fear or sadness. They will grow to healthy adulthood and do the same easy job all their lives. In their leisure time they’ll have as much sex and as much soma (bliss inducing drug with no side effects) as they like, and will die unafraid, still looking young and beautiful. Oh, yes, and they’ll all be blissfully happy, all of the time.

However, in six hundred years time the citizens of civilised society will be bred in jars, allowed to be only as intelligent or as physically capable as they need to be. After being decanted, they will be raised by the state (which will eschew education in favour of hypnodaedic suggestion and pavlovian conditiong). They will know neither the love of a family or of a partner (ideas of romantic love and parenthood will be reviled and illegal). They will be denied any choice of their occupation, denied any form of creativity or self expression, and will die unmourned and then soon be forgotten. And they’ll be blissfully happy, all of the time.

This is the paradox that raises Brave New World to the level of genius. This future society needs no Big Brother, no room 101, no continual war, no five minutes hate
. The happiness of the many is the key to stability, and the neutering of passion, and thereby the neutering of the beauty that we create and the truth we seek through passion, is the means by which happiness is achieved. After all, as Alan Moore (comic book author and very clever man indeed) put it in ‘V for Vendetta‘, "Happiness is the most insidious prison of all". And the truth that the novel allows us to see is that, happy or not, without that passion, without high art, without the quest for knowledge, we become less than human.

Aside from the philosophy it is worth pointing out that the novel is the home to many great characters. Bernard Marx is one of the few misfits for whom the ambrosia of paradise has a bitter taste, and his obvious flaws (cowardice, jealousy, and pettiness to name but three) make him an amusing protagonist. His noble friend, Helmholtz, whose artistic desires also separate him from the contented majority, and John, the savage, who comes to the Brave New World from without armed only with the teachings of Shakespeare, together show us the nightmare within the dream. Theirs are the recognisable morality and questing spirit to which we relate.

Most memorable, however, is Mustapha Mond, a model of wit and good humour, and a key architect of the Brave New World in all its terrible glory. Nowhere have I read the necessity of crushing the spark of human creativity so reasonably, so compellingly argued as by him in two near perfect chapters toward the end of the book. He is as charming, seductive, and wrong as the society itself.

Sadly Huxley has given us no really strong female characters. Lenina Crowne is well realised, but as vapid and unenlightened as she was raised to be. The lingering memory of her is as an object of lust for Bernard and later for the savage. I fear this is a limitation of the author at this stage of his career. One gets the impression from his work that Huxley saw women as l
ittle more than a distraction until later in his life. Certainly it is only in the later works of his that I have read (‘Island’, ‘The Genius and the Goddess’) which have featured women characters truly the intellectual equals of the men.

I don’t have much more to say, but I will describe my favourite scene within the book, simply because it is very funny and makes me smile to think of it. John the savage, somewhat upset, and disillusioned with the insane society he has stumbled into, tries to save a group of Delta class citizens (that is manual labourers, deprived of oxygen in the jar to retard their development) from their empty and meaningless lives of work, sex, brainless entertainment, and drugs. He manages to trigger a riot, and the forces of law and order “goggle-eyed and swine-snouted” come onto the scene. Instead of deploying tear gas and hitting people with batons they douse the area with soma gas, and then play to the combatants “Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength).”

“My friends, my friends!’ said the voice so pathetically, with a note of such infinitely tender reproach that, behind their gas masks, even the policemen’s eyes were momentarily dimmed with tears, ‘what is the meaning of this? Why aren’t you all being happy and good together? Happy and good,’ the voice repeated. ‘At peace, at peace.’…
Two minutes later the voice and the soma vapour had produced their effect. In tears the Deltas were kissing and hugging each other – half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensive embrace. Even Helmholtz and the savage were almost crying.”

‘Brave New World’ is a genuine classic. Thought provoking, well written, entertaining throughout, and inspiring. Huxley, in his foreword to the edition I have read states that he regrets that when he wrote it he could not see a different way for
ward for humanity; that he showed the danger that he felt was faced by a society increasingly desperate to consume, but could not offer any solution. He later did write his vision of an achievable true utopia, in his final novel, ‘Island’. The two novels together offer as complete an analysis of what we as people need as any author I have read. In short, a book which I feel everyone should read.

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