Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Huxley, A. (1932). Brave new world. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is one of those books everyone seems to read in high school or college; but for some reason, none of my teachers ever assigned it. So I was pleased to see it on our Censorship list so I decided to make up for lost time and read it now.
After all the futuristic settings in books I've read, this one initially seemed to be just one more. But I had to keep reminding myself that Huxley was a forerunner in this genre, setting a standard for others to follow. Although the novel is set a millennium and a half in the future, a number of elements of this “Brave New World” seem to be literary variations of historical events from centuries gone by. The peaceful and ordered society under which all mankind lives seems like what the Medieval Church said they were providing for all Christians. Children being divided into castes echoes the Calvinist concept of predestination. The sexual freedom of the New World was reminiscent of the same concept espoused by early suffragettes. People being resigned to their assigned lot in life seemed like a futuristic feudal system.
I can understand why this book would be so controversial for the time in which it was written. But compared to today’s literature, Brave New World seems as daring as Barbara Eden finally showing her navel on I Dream of Jeannie. Bernard and Lenina, the protagonists, add a lot of colorful contrast and humanism to this package, but I did not find myself really caring about them as much as I wish I could have. So, I never got caught up in the story.
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