Brave New World - Novel
Brave New World is the masterpiece by Aldous Huxley, published in 1932. It is considered either utopia and dystopia. The name of the novel comes from Shakespeare's The Tempest, from Miranda speech: "O wonder, How many goodly creatures are there here! O brave new world, that hath such people in't!" Through this novel Huxley expressed his fear of losing individual identity.
Utopian novel Men Like Gods by H.G.Wells inspired him to write this novel, it gave him an idea to write a parody of it, negative utopia. In this novel, Huxley geniously present us to ourselves in all our ambiguity. In this society, words like" mother", "father", "family", "love", do not mean anything and they are considered very insulting.
Brave New World begins in the "year of our Ford 632" -Our Lord has been replaced with Our Ford- (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). Henry Ford, a god of this society, set principles of the WorldState, a seemingly satisfied and successful society. All members of society live according to the values of The World State. They love anything that is good for society, and hate everything that is bad for it.
This is a world where the birth process has been mechanized and there is no natural reproduction. Society is divided into castes: The Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, every class has plus and minus members, ranging from the highly intelligent to the semi-morons. The Brave New World encourages heterosexual sex as a social activity from early childhood.
They are programmed to love their work and their place in society as well as to believe that their own class is the best for them. In this society, everybody is happy, there is no need for competition because everybody gets everything they wish for. In Brave new World, happiness means consuming mass- produced goods, sports such as Obstacle Golf and promiscuous sex, and in the case of unhappiness they consume pleasure drug soma, that has no side effects. The WorldState prohibits their citizens to read books and to spend time alone, because different thought from the rest of Society is not allowed. The Brave New World encourages heterosexual sex as a social activity from early childhood.
In this World, there is no fear for death. People typically die at age 61 and they have for the whole life a good health.
The story is about Bernard Max, an alpha, an outcast, who doesn't fit into this world and who is not content. He takes Lenina, a Beta, beautiful woman, for a vacation to the savage reservation (the area that with no condition for easy living, in this reservation " savages" are reproduce normally). There, they meet John (The Savage). It is character with him we identify most. His mother was accidentally left behind in the reservation, and she must stay there because she was pregnant. John returns to The Brave New World but he can not adapt to this society and takes his own life.
Aldous Huxley also wrote Brave New World Revisited, published in 1958 and 1965, where he compared his vision of the future world with real world.
