Aldous Huxley "Brave New World"

 

Aldous Huxley

It is 600 years in the future, and life on Earth has developed into a perfect society - a Brave New World, where humans are bred and conditioned scientifically to create a society in which people have peaceful, reasonably happy lives, but no individual freedom or opportunity for passion. It is a world in which individuality is discouraged and group unity is everything; in which loyalty to one sexual partner is viewed with disapproval, and in which unhappiness can be cured by a couple of tablets. There are, of course, many benefits to this kind of society. For example, there is no disease, suffering or pain. Everybody has work and nobody is dissatisfied with their position in a socially stable society. But there is a shadowy emptiness at the heart of this existence which only a few people are aware of. Bernard Marx is one of them. He is unusual because he spends much of his time alone, preferring his own private thoughts to the empty-headed, heartless company of those he has to live with. While other people in the New World have been conditioned not to think about emotions like passion - which they have never experienced - Bernard becomes increasingly aware of its absence, especially when he thinks of beautiful Lenina. Perhaps if he invited her on holiday with him to the Savage Reservation - the only place on Earth where people have not been produced from test tubes - he might discover a more meaningful happiness? Lenina is a conventional girl, completely comfortable with herself, the Brave New World that she lives in. and the values that it represents. But while Bernards strangeness is viewed with suspicion by everybody around her, she finds something mysteriously attractive about him. What would happen if she did accept his invitation and see, for the first time in her life, what real savages were like... ?

 

 

  

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