Brave New World is one of the main classics of Dystopian literature. Set six hundred years in the future, 2532 A.D., or in the book, 632 A.F. The initials stand for After Ford, after Henry Ford, being the promoter of mass production, and the concept now being applied to everything, even humans. (I’ve often wondered if Henry Ford himself ever read this book, and how he would have reacted to it if he did.)
The book is set in a future London, in a World State, with all humans produced in “hatcheries,” or birth machines. These embryos are conceived to be in one of five different castes, from Alpha, the most intelligent, some becoming world controllers, to Beta, almost as intelligent, and then the Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, from average to almost no intelligence, doing remedial work be it manual labor down to washing dishes in a kitchen. Exact copies of one another can be produced. In one instance, 96 clones, all resembling each other are produced to do one job, such as working at one machine.
All of these people are happy in their conditions, and their jobs, and in their spare time, they take a drug called “soma.” (I would like to point out that there is such a drug, and it is used as a muscle relaxer to people in severe pain. Aldous Huxley, I believe, based this drug on mescaline, a drug he himself took, and wrote about it in another book, “The Door of Perception.” Huxley was very much a drug doer.)
With all the comforts, everybody living in a sterilized, ultra-modern environment, where everything is done for you, it is hard to believe that this is a totalitarian regeime, but it is. People are programmed before birth, and don’t ever know that they are prisoners of their caste, and brainwashed by sleep teaching. Sexual promiscuity is also the norm, with “everybody belongs to everybody else.” The concept of freedom and individuality doesn’t even enter into the picture.
There are individuals, however, who rebel against the “system” and are sent to an island of misfits; in this book, Iceland.
The characters have the names of famous socialist philosophers: Lenina Crowne, a beautiful girl, named for Vladimir Lenin. Bernard Marx, one who questions authority, named for Karl Marx, Henry Foster named for Henry Ford, and Benito Hoover, after Benito Mussolini and Herbert Hoover. Mustapha Mond, a local “world controller” based in London, has the title of an Islamic cleric, but don’t be fooled, there is no religion or “God” here.
The plot in this novel is where Lenina and Bernard Marx visit a savage (Indian) reservation in Arizona. Fifteen years before, a Beta named Linda went with her then lover, a D.H.C. director, to the same place where they had sex. (Marriage no longer existed.) Linda was lost and abandoned on the reservation, where she had her son, name John. John grew up in the Native/Savage lifestyle, participating in ceremonies, doing all work by hand, by is rejected by his peers.
When Lenina and Marx arrive, they are appalled by the primitiveness of it all. Nonetheless, they take Linda and John back to London. Linda is an old hag now, fat, beauty gone, and takes soma continuously until she dies. John Savage, his new last name because he is seen as one, is appalled at the way everyone is spoiled, having everything given to them, living in luxury, with no real challenges, and they cannot imagine any other life, and here, I will leave the story. A lot does happen, and “Mr. Savage” is at the center of the trouble he later encounters.
This book is a reflection of our society, and its technology today, and more people should read this book.
Look at all of us today, who visit Indian reservations, and laugh at them and their ways of life. Look at the way people travel, some to countries with primitive cultures, and checking into a luxurious hotel, with all its catered services. Look at these 24 hours cable news channels, and see how they compare to “The Hourly Radio,” where one can also get instant news, 24 hours a day. Observe people around you always looking down on their hand held computers, never looking around them. Observe the way people talk all of their devices for granted, and if one of them breaks, they go into a panic. Look at our present day drug culture. Look at sexual promiscuity, and the high divorce rate.
All of this was foreseen by Huxley back in 1932, the year this book was released.
Huxley could see, even then, how the (then) modern world encouraged people to take things for granted. This book was written at the rise of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Franco, and television was still in the laboratory, but the public knew it was coming. World War II had not yet broken out, but the Depression was in full swing and massive political cults were rising up in the U.S.
Huxley knew of the terrors of Hitler and Stalin, et. al., and knew that their methods would not last. Instead, the author imagined a future regime, with the modern inventions and luxuries coming into being, along with the use of pleasure, not terror, in which a future dictator could retain power, possibly forever.
Could this happen? Look around you. See what gives people pleasure. See what they take for granted, and you’ll have your answer.
Alastair Browne
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