A Brave New World

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago when I completed the book. However for one reason or another it escaped me. But here we go. A Brave New World is set in the future where individuals are no longer, well, individuals. It's a time where a person is put into a group at birth and basically raised to like it. There is no fear of death, because no one ever looks old and death is something that is bred into them as a benefit to society. There are also no emotions. Sex is, more or less, required. Drugs are the norm. To keep people from getting pregnant everyone takes like five contraceptives. Oh, and people are bred in little jars with all sorts of medicinal miracles are pumped into their bodies as fetuses so no one ever gets sick.

On the one side, it paints the picture that everyone is happy. And most of the people seem happy with what they are. The lower class have been raised to not want to be any thing other than lower class. Yes, the downside is that no one is different. But hey, everyone is happy, right? And that's what's important.

Although things seem good for everyone, what about that person who doesn't fit in, even when they have spent their lives being conditionalized to fit in? What happens when a savage (someone who still procreates the "old fashion" way) comes into the new world? Well, thats when the story starts getting good.

Part of the problem with the novel was that Huxley spent so much time showing how the world was, the plot seemed lost amid the descriptions of the world and the way people lived. When the "Savage" finally comes to the new world to see how different and horrible things actually are, it seems almost a lost cause. There is a clash between the old way and the new way, each proposing that their way is the best way.

The book was good. It is always interesting to see how one person views the potential future. Huxley basically took everything that was taboo in his culture and made it compulsary in his new world. A world where everyone seems free, but no one really is.

In the end your left wanting more, left just a touch unsatisfied with what has unfolded through the pages. It's a sad new world, and I think that ultimately that is the point. Huxley wasn't creating a world where we have something to look forward to. He was painting a picture of what might come to be if the government, those in power, have too much power and too much say in our lives. It reminded me, in many ways, of V For Vendetta. A sad future where we've let ourselves become complacent in what is handed us.

A brave new world, indeed. A brave new world indeed.

Moral of the Story: Well, I'm not 100% sure, but I'm sure that it has to do with not letting the government do whatever it wants.