Brave New World

Not as good as 1984, although I think far more plausible at least in the western world. It's interesting to compare the two books (I read them back to back). Both sets of tactics are used by governments to keep people in line. In North America, where I live, we lean towards the pacification of Brave New World but our governments are certainly not above the “boot in the face” totalitarianism of 1984 as we've seen with the suppression of indigenous land protectors, peaceful protestors, and the policing of minorities.

Again, a lot to think about, a good thought piece, but not a great book, the story just wasn't all that compelling and the pacing felt off to me.

No sé por qué no me había dado el tiempo de leer este libro... Sin duda una distopía más que se añade a mi lista de favoritos. A pesar de que le tomó un buen par de páginas llegar a la trama esencial, la descripción del mundo “perfecto” es increíblemente certera a lo que se asemejaría una realidad similar. Lo único decepcionante es el desarrollo de los personajes, el cual, a mi parecer, no alcanzó un climax a la altura del problema que se manifiesta.

This book was very easy to read and starts with an explosion into a vivid an different world. Unfortunately I feel this went from a 4.5 star book to a 3.5 star book over the course of the book as I don't feel that the amazing world created wasn't used to it's full potential.

Saying that I still enjoyed this quick read.

(Minor spoilers) This book is about two things: individuality and civilisation.The characters are all caricatures of what it means to possess social individuality. In broader terms, to be different to those around you. Bernard is different because he's on the bottom rung of his caste, a rung that no one knew existed until he showed up. He is rejected because his individualised traits do not cohere with the rest of the caste that a part of. Helmholtz's difference is his superiority, an ubermensch amongst the elite. He's above everyone else. For Helmholtz, success is trivial, women are trivial, life is trivial; his place in society means little to him and so he has become aloof, rejecting comformity to his caste in favour of radical misbehaviour. John is different because he has no caste at all. He's and outsider to almost everyone's social circle, a true pariah. He's too white and civilised to be an Indian yet too emotional and unstable to be considered civilian. That same civilisation then took his mother from him, poisoned his moral purity and, in the end, refused to let him escape its grasp. Lenina, in fact, has no individuality at all. She is the perfect Alpha - beautiful, brainless, adamant in her pursuit of orthodoxy. Her suffering arises when John forces individuality upon her through his exclusive infatuation of her – and then rejects her scripted advances, undermining the stability upon which her conditioning rests. It is through Lenina that we glimpse the dire consequence of removing individuality in favour of stability, pruning the autoimmunity that individuality gives. Mustapha Mond parenthetically tells us that difference is suffering. Ironically, Mond is perhaps the most individualistic person in the book, and paradoxically its happiest. Why? Because Mond isn't actually different; because he is his own caste, his own comparison, his own society. He reads what he likes, dictates what he likes, declares his own morality – by his own admittance, he makes the rules. In a sense, he is beyond society. The illustration Aldous Huxley has painted for us is one of status anxiety, a critical feature of our modern world. It is what drives consumerism. It is what makes us jealous and angry at the success of others, and ashamed of our own failures. But what is failure without a comparison to success? Alain de Botton's [b: Status Anxiety 23425 Status Anxiety Alain de Botton https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1298417783s/23425.jpg 14280288] deals with this topic better than I ever could. In 1930, Aldous Huxley would have been aware of the rise of communism and the future it could promise. This book is in many ways a critique of that communism. The Brave New World is pointedly similar to how many people at the time described the ultimate outcome of successful communism – both the detractors and pundits; utopia and dystopia. Everything is easy, everyone is happy; to each what they need, with needs regulated closely. What Huxley truly felt about communism is best illustrated in the Cyprus experiment, perhaps. Is this book really dystopian, or is it utopian? What would Bentham have to say about the satisfied Alpha-Socrates, alongside the satisfied Gamma-Pigs? In 2019, a lot of the world that Huxley envisioned seems right around the corner. Designer babies, powerful escapist drugs made ubiquitous, paternalistic governments, insatiable consumerism...the list goes on. But the real lesson on offer in this book has been seemingly ignored: do we really want a world where individualism and its instability, its sturm-und-drang and emotional labour, has been replaced with happiness, easiness, and perhaps most jarringly of all, equality?

This book hasn't aged well. It may be one of the first cases of a dystopian novel, but the author's imagination doesn't stretch much further than that. A lot of his points are very on the nose, and the final chapters repeat them, just in case the reader has made it this far without figuring out the message. Would not recommend, but for some reason it still gets assigned in school.

Rating : 2.5

I wanted to like this book I really did. And in fact, I actually did for the first half of it. The premise of the book and the dystopian setting were highly promising but then the execution was poorly done and the closure was extremely bland.

The characters promised to have some kind of depth when introduced but ended up not having any. I ended up feeling extremely unattached to all them and couldn't feel any kind of empathy towards them.

Mustapha Mond promised to be an extremely interesting character. The confrontation between him and John at the end of the book reminded me of the confrontation between Winston and O'brien in part 3 of 1984. But in Brave New World, the confrontation s nothing but a showoff of the wit of the character with smart phrases that end up adding nothing interesting to the story. We don't discover anything new about Mustapha or the Society, nor does it add any value to John's character development.

Lenina's character to me is the blandest, her existance in the book is nothing but a cheap trigger for John's breakdown, which leads us to the weakest point of the whole book; the closure.

The closure of the book, in my opinion, is nothing more but a shock value. It only prooves to me a lack of ideas of where to go with the story.

In the end, I could only see similarities to 1984 but, unlike 1984, the book is poorly executed and lacks depth and a proper closure.

What is the price of stability? The loss of individuality? To sacrifice truth and beauty? To give up a family, God and even the possibility of romantic love?

Huxley paints a rather sinister dystopian future where rampant consumerism and the ‘good of the community' trumps passion, families, science and even reading good books. The civilised world is in a perpetual, drug induced state of ‘happiness'. Everyone is made to fit a particular mould; to know their place and to not deviate from their social conditioning. Into this world, Huxley introduces a Savage who has read Shakespeare, believes in God, loves his mother (scandalous!) and wishes be monogamous.

It is a thought provoking read. The arguments for this type of civilisation do actually make sense, but at what cost? No thank you. Send me to an island!

Most things being “mechanical” definitely still show the book's age and make it seem outdated. But the whole idea and concept behind “happiness” is still surprisingly relevant today. Everyone wants to be happy all the time, and that's what's eerie about this book. Makes you appreciate the dynamic of the ups and downs of life. I enjoyed this book!

2.75 stars “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery”

Wow. I still don't know what to feel about this book. So many complex emotions but one thing for sure: it could have been better. It was just too erratic and feels too unplanned in some places. So many parts could have been better and that ending was so underwhelming. Objectively, the first half was better than the other half.
Also the “debate” with the controller was so obviously one sided. There was no actual argument. The debate felt built on emotions and they weren't actually making opposing points. Each person was talking a totally different thing.
The characters were ALL unlikable. There were no grey areas, just caricatures of people you know would never exist. The dystopia was actually very appealing anyway because there was no solid argument made against it and carried through till the end. Pointing out the lack of something is not argument in favour of its existence.
My two stars are for the first 100 pages, the writing style and in general, how the story progressed.

Not to mention the unnecessary racism. The time it was written in is not an excuse. The book was progressive in many other issues, but calling darker skinned people “dog-skinned” outside of narration, outside of character dialogue or thoughts... so unnecessary.
That racism actually was part of the lower rating, not only on principles, but it literally created a plot hole. It was no longer this world in my head of these principles, but something that invaded the construction of this world and weakened it because it didn't make sense.

6 anos depois de lê-lo pela primeira vez, reecontro a obra de Huxley com grande interesse. Tantos pontos e perspectivas novas ficaram evidentes, em especial nos últimos capítulos!
Huxley conseguiu prever (ou talvez influenciar seja mais cabível) grandes avanços da engenharia e da genética, construindo em sua obra um mundo que não parece mais tão distante daquele em que vivemos hoje, e definitivamente se provando um pioneiro em muitas questões que vão desde questionamentos sobre a natureza do homem até a liberdade sexual que era impensável em 1932.

This one was bizarre. It was a three to begin with because of the jumps between locations and characters with no clear indication or really a pattern to the jumps and you just had to get used to the rhythm, and then he doesn't utilise that style again. Then the story actually got going and I thought I could forgive pass grievances and it became a four star book with the lovely dystopian fears we all have if we have a modicum of sense. But then it just ends. I don't like my conclusions spoon fed to me but I do like a book to have one. Hence the 3 star. Not as good as We and 1984 but ok. Almost like it needed 100 or so more pages.

As a lover of dystopian novels, this has been on my list of shame for a while now so I was pleased that it didn't disappoint. A different but no less frightening view of the future than that given in Orwell's 1984, much of the world depicted here is reflected in our current culture. This is definitely a book that still holds great relevance and that deserves its place as a true classic.

Wow. What a book?!! More chillingly relevant than ever before. It fizzes and pops with ideas and theories surrounding morality, religion, genetic engineering and socio-political agendas. It manages to subvert the current way we view the world and changes the perception of what modernity really means. I have so many things to express about this novel that I haven't enough space on this platform to discuss. But read it! Everyone read it! A more subtle dystopian that will resonate, terrify, unnerve and fascinate. Phenomenal. Just read it!

I found the story good, it had believable characters who did believable things. Even in the parts where the author was clearly making snide remarks about ideas, they were still fairly subtle. Everything felt like it had a soul, never did I feel like I was simply reading propaganda.

I liked the ending very much, it was rather a perfect irony that, in Johns desperate attempt to find meaning and reject "brave new world", he ended up destroying something with great meaning, someone who cared for him, his friend. John failed to see that, even in the hellish "brave new world" there was still some good, a good that he rejected along with the bad.