The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The Good: Brave New World is a dystopian novel set sometime in the future. It is a pretty grim picture of what could be. The redeeming part of the story is that no amount of social engineering completely kills the human spirit. There are still men/women who yearn for something different or more or real. While there are a lot of things I didn’t like about the book, I did like that Huxley left this idea of individuality there. It leaves hope. Hope is also given in the idea that anyone with individuality needs to be removed from the society lest it spread, indicating that the society has a very fragile hold on the people.

I did like the way that the book exposed the dangers of consumerism. What was particularily scary was the mirror it created to the world we live in right now. Companies creating things that don’t last because our society depends on a certain level of consumption to maintain itself.

The Bad: Ok, hope aside, there was a lot of this that was just uncomfortable. For instance, the main character, Bernard was a complete disappointment. He started out as the individual in the story, bucking his conditioning and reaching for something better. He ended up completely crumbling the minute he was accepted by the rest of his peers. Huxley shows us that somewhat dark side of us that will cave to social conformity. The treatment Huxley gives to the savages mother is also inidicative of how the society treated her. He uses her to narrate the visit to the reservation, then quickly discards her.

The Ugly: The treatment of sex in the book was the major ugly part for me. There is no marriage, no families and sex is treated as a recreational activity like going for a hike. Of course the society needs to dehumanize the experience to create the conformity it needs to survive, but I would in no way recommend that any student reads this book. 13 and I were doing a dystopian novel class and I was prereading and I am certainly glad I did. I did not allow him to read the book, but we did discuss the elements of the book.

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