Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

“that is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”

— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

          Have you ever imagined that even the most perfect utopia imaginable couldn’t bring the happiness you truly desire? Aldous Huxley has. And Brave New World is a novel that explores a futuristic world were science takes over, pleasure is superficial and happiness is explored like never before. The book follows the story of Bernard Marx as he questions his knowledge of love and seeks the happiness in forms that are completely denounced. His search for freedom from a utopia gone wrong leads him to a Savage Reservation camp where things are about to unravel in the World Controller’s society.

“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 upon our enemies.”

– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Aldous Huxley succeeds in creating a world were individuals don’t have long-term purposes and live on short-term pleasures. There happiness is easily satisfied with sex and drugs, notably with the help of a drug that only exists in there world and that goes by the name of soma. Individuals in this book are born and raised with thorough manipulation, done with the help of good ol’ behavior conditioning. A neat example of this is seen through children and the death conditioning later in the book. There’s nothing more sorrowful than that scene. As a character mourns the loss of his mother, the children around them behave in the most disrespectful and outrageous manners. Conditioning remains one of the main course of action to a brainwashed society. What is truly remarkable in this book is how it also brings into play a character that doesn’t exactly fall into Bernard’s world of the Savage’s world. This gives readers a point of view that can bring forth criticism to the very premises of the utopia Bernard lives in.

“Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.”

– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

The impact of technology is quite scary and important in this novel. From the way children are conceived to the use of drugs to satisfy basic needs. The society created is one where discomfort is impossible to reach but emotions, such as love, are nonexistent. Deep inside, I’ve always thought that the most extreme of utopias and obviously the most hellish of dystopias were to be never achieved for the things they strip away from us. It is after all through as much the happiness and success than the pains and failures that individuals and society can grow and progress, if you ask me. I also was satisfied by the impact of science on the mind of people. We seem to easily get impressed by numbers and statistics that get thrown at us nowadays. We gobble them like fish food to sea creatures. The book shows this pretty well in the long, unnecessary details given to individuals only to impress and nothing more. I loved how the author slyly made descriptions of things that simply didn’t matter in the long run, but knew that it was in these descriptions that individuals were prompted to believe and obey. Anything that comes straight out of the horses head is always infallible truth, right? Wrong.

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

         Subjectivity, individuality, personality are all weapons in their power to convey change and contest rulers. Brave New World explores control in its own way and demonstrates the pursuit of happiness with great prowess. The exploration of humanity through the Savages made this novel truly epic. Having a huge contrast between the two main groups in the world Aldous Huxley creates helps elevate our own analysis of the utopia in place. That is great story-telling if you ask me. The change in protagonist from Bernard to a Savage who goes by name of John was also amazing. How Bernard Marx becomes irrelevant and a joke as the story progresses to let John become the focus is amazing. This novel demands a read from everyone since it explores ideas that are still relevant to this day. Although some elements are controversial, a good amount of this book has a lot of truth.

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My overall rating: ★★★★★/