What a Pneumatic Read! (Brave New World - Aldous Huxley)

Member Name: SpankMarvin

Product:	Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Date:	07/08/01 (188 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Disturbing, Almost true!

Disadvantages: The end of the book verges on overkill in terms of putting across the message of the novel

I picked up this book having thoroughly enjoyed George Orwell’s later prophetic novel of dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Huxley’s earlier novel is his most famous, and with Orwell’s it acts as a voice on modern society by exaggerating existing trends and negative circumstances. The story follows the main character Bernard Marx as he realises that his existence is far from the happy utopia that it is made to seem by the interaction of others. His dissatisfaction is defined by the flipside of this idealised society, the savage reservation, in which the inhabitants reserve the right to be unhappy, unstructured and varied, with the imperfections of the old ways of life actually making them a more real society than that which considers itself the standard.

Sex is one of the obvious differences between the two worlds. As in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, love has been removed from the equation and subsequently sex is trivialised as a pleasure behind which no emotion is applicable. In Atwood’s novel, sex becomes an important ritual for childbearing but love is eliminated. Although in Brave New World the importance of sex is played down to the point of it becoming throwaway, the result on love is the same. It is no longer important to society, in fact it is counter-productive to society’s aims insofar as it encourages displays of rash emotion, implicit of subjectivity, spontaneity and ultimately possible independence. Society’s way of dealing with the possibility of such emotion is to spread it as thinly as possible over its subjects, making sex as commonplace and passive as children playing (in the novel, children actually do play by exploring each other sexually). In a similar way, the use of the anti-depressant drug soma is so widespread that no one actually feels the need to question why it is necessary to take it in the first place. As with the copious amounts of gin which people devour in Ninet
een Eighty-Four, soma is a worrying but ignored warning about the society in which its takers live.

The detachment of emotion is one of the main themes of Brave New World, as the members of society unwittingly sacrifice individuality for security and comfort. ‘Unwittingly’ is also very important, as the lack of individuality in society and everybody’s happiness with an unfulfilled life goes hand in hand with the idea of imposed ignorance and resulting ‘happiness’. The book certainly raises the question as to whether one is genuinely happy if they do not know another existence where they really would be happy. The inhabitants know no other way, and have nothing to compare their lives to since they are all the same, in appearance as well as in contentment. Because of this, everyone behaves like staff in the Disney store, all smiles and cuddly thoughts, mixed with sex, and not mentally able to express an alternative. Sinister.

The idea of contentment leads on to another quite interesting aspect of the novel; the fact that contentment between individuals seems the same even though the quality of life is deliberately different. Caste systems decide what level of human will do what in life, and in turn how much education they will receive. The lowest caste will learn minimal language and will do hard and repetitive manual labour, having been conditioned to enjoy these circumstances. The highest castes do less and know more, so that although quality of life is vastly different, the enjoyment gained from it is disturbingly similar. This system also works to remove individuality paradoxically by encouraging it in terms of the caste groups. Each caste considers theirs to be the best and the luckiest in life. Subsequently there is no feeling of desire to outdo any other caste, since they are content with their lot and glad they don’t have to do the other jobs. Society then runs smoothly with the added bonus of n
o-one wanting to try out any new ways of life. Imagine hoovering the garden for a living, and actually enjoying it. Hellish.

In this way, Brave New World is a brilliantly disturbing book. It is clinical and falsely happy, psychologically materialistic (hello, Pokémon) and ridden with slogans for satisfactory life-living (Gotta Catch ‘Em All!). In the novel, society uses the idea of tradition to enforce its values. The values it enforces are unquestionable, their origins springing from the rising of Henry Ford (!!!) the new replacement for God (whose name is still taken in vain). The old ways of living are remembered, but as revolting, savage and backwards morals which now make people physically sick, and which should be avoided at all costs.

Brave New World is partly a comment on society and partly a comment on the mentality which society could eventually embrace if trends were to carry on. The founder of Ford as God part is probably the most inaccurate part, but then Bill Gates and Richard Branson hadn’t been born when this novel was written. What is perhaps the most distressing part of the book is how much of it has already come partially if not wholly true. Cloning and genetic modification are very real issues in the 21st century, which at the time would have been quite nightmarish in a science fiction sense. Soma is used by many a student and similarly mentally depressed person, under the name of Prozac. What is perhaps frightening about the novel these days is how non-science fictional this book has become. Some of the aspects of this book are affecting yet mainly because they are not actually that surprising. Brave New World is gripping and easy to read. It is as enjoyable as Nineteen Eighty-Four, because although it is similar in some respects, it takes a more scientific approach towards the psychology behind society and differs enough from Orwell’s novel to be unique and yet appeal to the same readership. Pe
rhaps the only grumble is the very nearly over the top parts near the end with the savage, in which the themes of the book are thrust in the reader’s face perhaps a bit too blatantly. Luckily, this doesn’t become too ridiculous, and the book remains intelligent, engrossing and brilliantly written. It must be read. Now!

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