Brave New World-Aldous Huxley

This week I read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Published in 1932, this novel is set in a jarring utopia inspired by Ford manufacturing in which a stringent caste system dictates the lives of all citizens. People are no longer born and raised in a familial setting, but grown through artificial means, potentially in batches of thousands of twins, in amounts that perfectly satisfy the necessary working needs of each caste. The story follows young John, who was raised apart from this civilization and is now in his early adulthood. The world he grew up in (a society similar to the Native Americans in New Mexico at the time the book was written) valued religion, domestic partnerships, and individualism, concepts the new world has discarded. The novel largely consists of his antagonistic relationship with the new world.

This novel is often compared to the book I read last week, 1984. Both were written around the same time and center around the workings of a frightening futuristic society. In addition, the author of each respective book thought the future they described was in actual danger of becoming real. But I found it interesting the means by which these societies governed, because they are so markedly different; Orwell thought the government would suppress us through hyper surveillance and censorship, while Huxley imagined a world in which we would be controlled by having everything we could ever want at our fingertips. I think Huxley's world is much more realistic and dangerous: with all of our physical needs provided for, what desire would anyone have to dissent? It nearly completely eliminates the possibility, which is frightening to say.

I found this book increasingly engaging and it's my favorite of the two I've read so far. I admired the greater subtlety in Huxley's writing and felt greater resonance to the world he had constructed. A world that shuns beauty and individual freedom in the name of progress is frightening, but perhaps not as distant as we may hope.

If anyone's interested, I found a movie based on the novel (three hours long??) on Youtube-check it out here

Comments

  1. Stephanie ZuccatoSeptember 4, 2018 at 6:46 PM

    In a book that I'm reading for a communications class, the author contrasts the way that Huxley and Orwell view the world. I definitely agree that Huxley's view of the world is the more dangerous of the two, basically saying that we would be so blissfully content that we wouldn't care about certain rights being stripped away from us. We can actually see real-life examples of this, including communist societies where they lack certain media freedom because the government controls the content that people are allowed to watch. While there are definitely people in a society like this that wouldn't be blissfully content, the majority of people would not dissent.

    I think if I were to ever read one of the books, I'd elect to read Brave New World, because I think it presents some interesting themes for its reader to ponder.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How the Irish Became White-Noel Ignatiev

This marks the first nonfiction book I've read so far in this blog. How the Irish Became White is an explanation by author and historian Noel Ignatiev's observations on how the Irish went from being seen as "nonwhite" and being treated inferiorly to those of western European descent to becoming identified as white today. I was interested to delve into this book because I knew vaguely of the issues that surrounded the Irish when they first emigrated to the United States to avoid the persecution they faced from the English: it was interesting to learn that the Irish were not only leaving because of the hopeless conditions caused by the famous Irish potato famine, but because Irish catholics had their rights severely stricken to prevent them from owning property, practicing catholicism, and holding certain jobs. The novel really drives the point in that they were effectively second-class citizens, making their actions as American citizens that more disappointing. 
Read more

Your Kickstarter Sucks (aka this week we're switching things up)

Image
It is in my nature to be candid, and that's exactly what I'm about to do. Forgive me if I hurt some of you, but I can't knowingly sit on a lie and betray the trust of those of you reading. The truth is... I didn't read anything this week. I read all the books in my blog because I'm assigned weekly readings in another class I have and we didn't have any assigned for fall break. Great in the context of that class, but what about my blog content? Must it suffer just so I can give my tired old eyes a break? No! That's why this week, I'm going to flip my blog theme right on it's head and talk about my favorite podcast instead. And if you're one of those people who likes to whine about the progression of technology, you might even think the audiobooks/podcasts are the modern version of books, so in that sense, I'm not really doing anything out of sorts. Your Kickstarter Sucks is a podcast derived from a Tumblr blog of the same name. Ev
Read more

Player Piano-Kurt Vonnegut

Image
There have been multiple periods in history where man had to wonder if the convenience of technology had superseded his own wellbeing-when we made machines that could mine coal, the coal miners were out of work, and we questioned if automation could hurt more than help. In 2018, we face the same question, this time with many aspects of the food service industry. Is replacing human cashiers with kiosks detrimental to our society as a whole? Are we, like the old adage goes, just replacing unskilled labor? Or could this continue to happen for any number of jobs we couldn't imagine? These are the questions posed by Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut's first novel. In this novel, machines have replaced nearly every form of work, leaving the elite class as simply those who can create more of them. Those without a job get assigned to the reeks and wrecks (essentially manual labor), the army, or remain jobless. This doesn't mean many people are left unemployed: the government sets up
Read more