With all of these controlling forces, individual identity has been eliminated. People cannot think for themselves, nor do they want to. In the story, the main character, Bernard Marx, leaves civilization to visit a "savage" reservation in which people have maintained the old version of community. In this reservation, the people are horrified by the lack of emotion and individualism the "civilized" people display. Bernard takes two exiles back with him: John, who was born in the reservation, and his mother, who escaped there and yet never fit in. When John comes to the "perfect" society, he instantly becomes a celebrity because of his individual attitude and yet he is absolutely miserable in this society. I won't give away the ending, but it's worth reading what happens.
The moral of the story is that "happiness" is not as valuable as it appears. Perhaps our end goal in life is not to be happy. Perhaps we just need to redefine happiness. Many philosophers over the years have claimed that all we want is happiness. But in my life, I think it is the difficult things that have made me learn and grow the most. It is in the tough times that I was able to figure out who I am and become better. Yes, I treasure being happy, but that is not what life is all about. In the form of satire, Huxley criticized many of the ideals that were held in his society. Moreover, he did this explicitly, giving his characters easily recognizable names of his contemporaries. I loved this book and ate it up in just one day. I think it illustrates some very important problems within our culture in an interesting, apocalyptic way.
6 comments:
ah! I can't wait to read this. Another friend recommended it to me and now you have made it seem so fabulous I can't wait!!!!
Great thoughts. I liked this book a lot, but I think I liked 1984 a little bit better.
Ah yes, that review (1984) will be part of the series
I just finished reading this one for the first time. You're right - it was really easy to get through, the pages flew by. Great review, Amy.
What struck me most was the limitation on feeling. Like you focused on, the 'civilized' people were told to be happy (actually, they were told that they already were happy, in one of the hypnopaedic statements), but really they were lulled into a sort of apathy and, encouraged not to feel anything at all. Every time they started to feel a swell of anger, jealousy, or even joy, they took soma. The members of society were not only totally dispassionate, they were conditioned to be satisfied with that lack of feeling.
You noted that perhaps the story is pushing for a redefinition of 'happiness'. I think that's a good reading of the novel. It seems to me that Huxley tried to show the way that happiness has been emptied of meaning because it was said to apply to everyone, everywhere, all the time, and all these people were themselves emptied of any kind of emotion or passion. The moral, or the central thrust, of the story seems to me to be not only that 'happiness' is not this escape from feeling, but that, on the contrary, it is precisely the chance to, as you say, 'learn and grow' by meeting difficult things and fully feeling their impact - intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
If you're interested in reading more of Huxley's thoughts on society, particularly in relation to Brave New World and how it expresses his hopes and fears for the political and social development of the western world, I recommend Brave New World: Revisited. Written some twenty-seven years after the original novel, it's about eighty pages of Huxley's reflections on the ways in which the nations of America and Western Europe are moving toward certain aspects of the BNW civilization.
Including his thoughts on the ramifications of Nazism and Stalinism, it shows a huge leap forward in his contemplation of society since the completion of the novel. It is also just as easy to read, despite being more of an extended essay, rather than a piece of fiction.
I found it on his website and read it there.
http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/
Carl, thank you so much for your reflections! I think you are right to highlight the importance of "fully feeling" that Huxley seems to show us. I am also interested to read his thoughts about the novel almost thirty years after he produced it. Stay tuned, because I plan to come back to Brave New World's implications for today when I wrap up my short series on apocalyptic lit.
I could go on about what I felt, how the story moved me, how it will stick in my head for a long time to come. I will simply end with a quote, something I told a dear friend after I finished reading this.
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