Brave New World

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Brave New World

Brave New World is a science fiction novel that is about a society where happiness has been achieved. The story begins in London some 600 years into the future. The world is run by tenWorld Controllers. Reproduction has been removed from the womb and people are made in bottles by generic engineering. Each human is engineered and conditioned to predestined work. People are made into different levels of intelligence, and everyone belongs to one of five classes. These classes range from Alphas, who are most intelligent, to the Epsilons, who are dim-whitted and are produced to do the dirty jobs that nobody else wants to do.

In this society happiness is carried out to extremes. It does it’s best to demolish any painful or undesirable emotions. That’s why the idea of a family was abolished, because it may bring feelings that are unhappy. Also, everyone is used to the idea of death as a natural process, because they were conditioned earlier to accept it as this. As if all this wasn’t enough already, soma was introduced into the society. Soma is a drug that calms people down and makes them forget about any unpleasant thoughts, without the bad side effects that today’s drugs may have.

The story is set in 632 A.F. (After Ford), which begins with Lenina Crowne going to the dressing room after work. There she meets her friend Fanny Crowne (they have the same last name because only 10,000 last names are used in this society) and talks with her. There, they talk with each other about who is sleeping with who since in this society “everyone belongs to everyone else,” they have the right to sleep with whomever they want. Lenina says that she is currently with Henry Foster and has been for four months. Fanny nags Lenina about this and tells her to get another man. So Lenina decides to go with Bernard Marx who has invited her to go with him to a Savage Reservation, which is an uncivilized place filled with poverty, religion, feelings, and individualism.

Bernard is an Alpha-Plus, which is considered to be the highest rank in intelligence. However, for an Alpha, he is short and physically inadequate. Others believe that he may have accidentally received a dose of alcohol in the production stage. He is different than others. Bernard is a bit odd, likes to stay independent and doesn’t have much luck with wome...

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...ortant in the real world. Bernard is then sent to Iceland, and Helmholtz to the Falkland Islands. The Controller wants to keep John for experimenting, but John runs away and isolates himself from society, where he lives like a hermit. When the civilized people come to see him, he joins in with one of their religious dances called “orgy-porgy”. The next day when he wakes up, he commits suicide.

The story’s point of view is the third person, omniscient. This way, the reader can know what’s going on in all the characters’ minds. Huxley’s writing style is fairly easy to read and follow, it’s his complicated ideas that makes the reader think. It is obvious that he had been educated at a very good place because of his brilliantly presented ideas and the use of vocabulary words. Huxley was very creative with the names of the characters. He turned Our Lord into Our Ford (Ford is the God of this society). Also, other names like Bernard Marx comes from Karl Marx, who came up with the theory of socialism. The name, Benito Hoover was taken from President Hoover of the United States. Reading this book felt like I was on a different planet, which was an interesting experience.

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