by Aldous Huxley, 1932
Wayne suggested reading this book for years. The Parkwood Estates Library had a copy of it, so I took it and finally read it, at the age of 67! It starts out horrible – a baby factory! Thousands of babies being manufactured, decanted. They decant them in different castes. Some are given alcohol in their test tubes to stunt their brains and their physical growth. They are the ones who will be garbagemen and manual laborers. Some are given the best of everything and they are the Alphas. Of course, they are white and tall and beautiful. As the children grow up, they are brainwashed constantly all night long; softly spoken words playing over and over again all night long. The same phrases over and over again, teaching them that consumption is good, gratifying their desires is good, sex is good, drugs are good. They encourage young children to play sexual games. Those that want to be alone or are different in some way are punished. As adults, they do their work, the work they were bred to do, and then line up for Soma tablets. Soma is a drug that makes you pleasantly high with no after-effects; no nausea, no hangover, no ill effects whatsoever. They get high and have fun at a few different diversions – golf, tennis, flying helicopters, and movies called “feelies.” Feelies are movies that allow you to see, smell, and feel what is happening on screen. There is no monogamy, motherhood or fatherhood, no family structure. The culture is stable. There is no violence or war or disease or famine. You take injections that keep you young and beautiful until about age 60 when you die in a hospital for the dying alongside many others. They give you lots of Soma so you are pleasantly high all day and all night, until you die. Then you are whisked away by a group of lower caste people who are bred to take care of the dying. You are cremated and your ashes become fertilizer to further society.
Two of the main characters, Bernard Marx and Lenina, take a vacation to Santa Fe, and part of that vacation is a tour of the Savage Reservation. They meet Indians who live in family units, who practice religion, who grow, hunt, and cook their own food. They meet John and his mother, Linda; white people living on the edge of the Indian reservation. Linda is ugly, fat, teeth falling out, alcoholic. John is a young man living as an Indian but not accepted as one – not allowed to participate in their ceremonies. His mother was a beautiful white woman who came out to Santa Fe long ago with her friend, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning. She went hiking by herself and fell and got injured and knocked out. They could not find her so they left her there. The Indians find her. She is pregnant and has a baby. She was taught that motherhood is gross, but she overcomes her brainwashing in that respect and loves her baby boy. She teaches him how to read and he loves Shakespeare, one of the only books they have. She does not overcome her brainwashing about sex, though, and becomes a whore for any of the men who want her. She becomes an alcoholic, addicted to mescal. She grows old and fat and ugly; losing her teeth and her looks.
Bernard realizes that Linda and her son, John, are the Director’s. Bernard saves his own life by bringing Linda and John back to Brave New World with he and Lenina. Bernard humiliates the Director and he resigns and moves to Iceland, where he was going to send Bernard.
John is called the Savage and he is a reluctant celebrity in Brave New World. He has fallen in love with Lenina and she would gladly let him have sex with her but he cannot overcome his morals. He is disgusted by this society. His mother is happy as a clam – she is given a place to lie in bed and take soma all day long, watching TV, until she dies. When she dies, he is distraught at how death is handled. He goes and lives by himself in a tower in the middle of nowhere, but it’s a beautiful nowhere. He is discovered, and reporters come and then the whole world knows about him and wants to see him, especially when he whips himself as a punishment when he is overcome with lust for Lenina. Once he is discovered there, they will not leave him alone, and he commits suicide by hanging. That is how the book ends, the reporters have come and they find him hanging. His feet are spinning slowly back and forth. The end.
What you have is a picture of a society full of brainwashed, compliant individuals. They are happy to work all day and then take drugs to keep them “happy.” There is no art or science or religion. There is no love. There is no famine, disease, war, or loneliness. This is contrasted with the Indians who have meaningful art, meaningful work, close-knit family lives, ceremonies celebrating growth and milestones, and love. They grieve but they also dance for joy. They work hard but they have the satisfaction of a job well-done, and they create art – they write, they mold clay, they weave, they make bows. They love deeply, but they also hate and can be violent and cruel. In the Brave New World, there is only manufactured happiness. The main goal of the society is to keep it stable, and they do so by mass-producing humans to perform different jobs, then brainwashing and drugging them.
In the Foreword by Aldous Huxley, written 15 years later, in 1946, after the horrors of WWII including the nuclear bombing of Japan, he writes:
“If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity — a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a community of exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the Reservation. In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque and co-operative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man’s Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle–the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: “How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man’s Final End?”
He writes: “But it is conceivable that we may have enough sense, if not to stop fighting altogether, at least to behave as rationally as did our eighteenth-century ancestors. The unimaginable horrors of the Thirty Years War actually taught men a lesson, and for more than a hundred years the politicians and generals of Europe consciously resisted the temptation to use their military resources to the limits of destructiveness or (in the majority of conflicts) to go on fighting until the enemy was totally annihilated.”
And further, “Assuming, then, that we are capable of learning as much from Hiroshima as our forefathers learned from Magdeburg, we may look forward to a period, not indeed of peace, but of limited and only partially ruinous warfare. During that period it may be assumed that nuclear energy will be harnessed to industrial uses….”
“…Third (since reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays), a substitute for alcohol and the other narcotics, something at once less harmful and more pleasure-giving than gin or heroin. And fourth (but this would be a long-term project, which it would take generations of totalitarian control to bring to a successful conclusion) a foolproof system of eugenics, designed to standardize the human product and so to facilitate the task of the managers. In Brave New World this standardization of the human product has been pushed to fantastic, though not perhaps impossible, extremes. Technically and ideologically we are still a long way from bottled babies and Bokanovsky groups of semi-morons. But by A.F. 600, who knows what may not be happening? [in the book, the time-line is A.F., “After Ford,” and Ford is their god, “Ford knows” and “Good Ford” are common phrases.] Meanwhile the other characteristic features of that happier and more stable world–the equivalents of soma and hypnopaedia and the scientific caste system–are probably not more than three or four generations away. Nor does the sexual promiscuity of Brave New World seem so very distant. There are already certain American cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages…As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.
“All things considered it looks as though Utopia were far closer to us than anyone, only fifteen years ago, could have imagined. Then, I projected it six hundred years into the future. Today it seems quite possible that the horror may be upon us within a single century. That is, if we refrain from blowing ourselves to smithereens in the interval…”
That was 1946, eighty years ago. It is conceivable that China, in the next 20 years, could be manufacturing people to take care of their problem of low birth rate, a problem they created by killing baby girls.
The Introduction to this volume was written by Ashley Montegu in 1974. It is well-written and informative. Here are some quotes from it:
“…There is only one other book of our own time which enjoys an equally deserved fame–George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, seventeen years after Brave New World.
“Huxley’s book deals with life under a scientific dictatorship in which all individuality is suppressed. Nineteen Eighty-Four presents life under a political dictatorship in the totalitarian world of “Big Brother,” in which the mechanization and dehumanization of man are achieved by purely political means. Both authors well understood that neither science nor politics was enough. Both authors leave it to the reader to draw the conclusion that without humanity, without compassion, without love human societies, like human beings, are doomed to failure and, what is worse, to the dehumanization of man in the name of humanity.
“He [Huxley in 1958] was surprised by the speed with which so much that he had predicted had already been realized. Huxley’s “soma,” under the name of “tranquilizer,” is today a multimillion-dollar industry That other “tranquilizer,” sexual permissiveness, is also on its way to being fully realized, not to mention subliminal conditioning, hypnopaedia (teaching the sleeper), teaching machines, and all the other nefarious arts of “brainwashing.” These are, already, facts of “civilized life.” As for freedom, as Erich Fromm made devastatingly clear in Escape From Freedom (1941), there has been a wholesale flight from freedom, and the rate at which it is being voluntarily surrendered is exceeded, perhaps, only by the rate at which the retreat from reason is making itself felt.
“The abdication of personal individuality, the wholesale disengagement from community, alienation, the rejection of freedom–all are evidences of civilized man’s malaise.
“Freedom is the most demanding of all responsibilities. It is something constantly to be worked at if it is to be understood, maintained, and developed. Freedom is not so much the liberty to do what one likes, as the right to be able to do what one ought.”…
“Since human beings can be conditioned to believe that almost anything is “right,” and therefore constitutes what they “ought” to do, in the name of morality they can be caused to commit the most immoral of acts and esteem them “good.” For those who are unable to tolerate freedom, who feel burdened by it, alone or abandoned in its midst, Fascism, Naziism, and Communism or some other form of totalitarianism come as a welcome solution to their problems. It is clearly the direction in which contemporary man is moving. And as Huxley foresaw, the pressures of uncontrolled population growth, with the three outriders of the apocalyptic vision–famine, disease, and war–together provide conscienceless demagogues with the conditions most congenial for their purposes. We are witnessing the enactment of this tragedy in many parts of the world.”
Here are quotes from the book, Brave New World:
Describing the after-work rituals for the women in Brave New World: “From her dim crimson cellar Lenina Crowne shot up seventeen stories, turned to the right as she stepped out of the lift, walked down a long corridor and, opening the door marked GIRLS’ DRESSING-ROOM, plunged into a deafening chaos of arms and bosoms and underclothing. Torrents of hot water were splashing into or gurgling out of a hundred baths. Rumbling and hissing, eighty vibro-vacuum massage machines were simultaneously kneading and sucking the firm and sunburnt flesh of eighty superb female specimens. Every one was talking at the top of her voice. A Synthetic Music machine was warbling out a super-cornet solo.”
…”Lenina got out of the bath, towelled herself dry, took hold of a long flexible tube plugged into the wall, presented the nozzle to her breast, as though she meant to commit suicide, pressed down the trigger. A blast of warmed air dusted her with the finest talcum powder. Eight different scents and eau-de-Cologne were laid on in little taps over the wash-basin. She turned on the third from the left, dabbed herself with chypre and, carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand, went out to see if one of the vibro-vacuum machines were free.”
Lenina talking with her friend, Fanny, who isn’t feeling quite right and was advised by the doctor to have a Pregnancy Substitute:
“”Syrup of Corpus Luteum,” Lenina read the names aloud. “Ovarin, guaranteed fresh: not to be used after August 1st, A.F. 632. Mammary Gland Extract: to be taken three times daily, before meals, with a little water. Placentin: 5cc to be injected intravenally every third day…Ugh!” Lenina shuddered. “How I loathe intravenals, don’t you?”
Describing Lenina as pneumatic: “Lenina Crowne?” said Henry Foster, echoing the Assistant Predestinator’s question as he zipped up his trousers. “Oh, she’s a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I’m surprised you haven’t had her.”
Bernard is depressed because he is going to be sent to Iceland: “Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected (soma-less and with nothing but his own inward resources to rely on) to some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for affliction.”
When Linda is going to hit her little boy, John, and he is remembering it:
“Little beast!” She pulled down his arm; his face was uncovered.
“Don’t, Linda.” He shut his eyes, expecting the blow.
“But she didn’t hit him. After a little time, he opened his eyes again and saw that she was looking at him. He tried to smile at her. Suddenly she put her arms round him and kissed him again and again.”
When John is being taught how to work clay into a vessel by an old Indian:
“To fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining in skill and power–this gave him an extraordinary pleasure.”
The title of the book is from Shakespeare’s, The Tempest. John, the Savage, quotes Shakespeare all the time. On page 129, at the prospect of going to Utopia with Bernard and beautiful Lenina:
“…How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!” The flush suddenly deepened; he was thinking of Lenina, of an angel in bottle-green viscose, lustrous with youth and skin food, plump, benevolently smiling. His voice faltered. “O brave new world,” he began, then suddenly interrupted himself; the blood had left his cheeks; he was as pale as paper. “Are you married to her?” he asked.
“Am I what?”
“Married. You know — for ever. They say ‘for ever’ in the Indian words; it can’t be broken.”
“Ford, no!” Bernard couldn’t help laughing.
‘John also laughed, but for another reason–laughed for pure joy.
“O brave new world,” he repeated. “O brave new world that has such people in it. Let’s start at once.”
Chapter 11:
“After the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all upper-caste London was wild to see this delicious creature who had fallen on his knees before the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning–or rather the ex-Director, for the poor man had resigned immediately afterwards and never set foot inside the Centre again–had flopped down and called him (the joke was almost too good to be true!) “my father.” Linda, on the contrary, cut no ice; nobody had the smallest desire to see Linda. To say one was a mother–that was past a joke: it was an obscenity. Moreover, she wasn’t a real savage, had been hatched out of a bottle and conditioned like any one else: so couldn’t have really quaint ideas. Finally–and this was by far the strongest reason for people’s not wanting to see poor Linda–there was her appearance. Fat; having lost her youth; with bad teeth, and a blotched complexion, and that figure (Ford!)–you simply couldn’t look at her without feeling sick, yes, positively sick. So the best people were quite determined not to see Linda. And Linda, for her part, had no desire to see them. The return to civilization was for her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, as though you’d done something so shamefully antisocial that you could never hold up your head again. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.
“Which will finish her off in a month or two,” the doctor confided to Bernard. “One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would be different. But we can’t.”
Page 144, Bernard Marx is enjoying his celebrity – he is the one who brought the Savage and the people are clamoring to see the Savage through Bernard.
“The days passed. Success went fizzily to Bernard’s head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good.”
Bernard wrote a letter to the head of the government, the Controller, Mustapha Mond, about the Savage and his relationship to Linda, his mother. The Controller is angry at Bernard’s arrogance that he won’t spell out the word, ‘mother,’ in the letter, thinking the Controller is too squeamish to handle it.
“”The Savage,” wrote Bernard, “refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because the woman Linda, his m——, remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his m—–’s senility and the extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her and appears to be much attached to her–an interesting example of the way in which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object).”
Pages 162-163:
“A New Theory of Biology” was the title of the paper which Mustapha Mond had just finished reading…..Not to be published.” He underlined the words…It was the sort of idea that might easily de-condition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes–make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge..”
Page 202, they are trying to explain to John, the Savage, about the Feelies: “…You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.”
Helmholtz Watson is a good man in Brave New World. He’s a writer who wants to create high art, rather than write for the Feelies. He is sent to an island of his choosing. He chose the Falkland Islands because, “I should like a thoroughly bad climate,” he answered. “I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example…”
Page 214 and 215, John is talking to the Controller about God. The Controller: ‘You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God….
“Then you think there is no God?”
“No, I think there quite probably is one.”
“Then why?…”
‘Mustapha Mond checked him. “But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In pre-modern times he manifested himself as the being that’s described in these books. Now…”
“How does he manifest himself now?” asked the Savage.
“Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren’t there at all.”
…
“But all the same,” insisted the Savage, “it is natural to believe in God when you’re alone–quite alone, in the night, thinking about death…”
“But people never are alone now,” said Mustapha Mond. “We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it’s almost impossible for them ever to have it.”
‘The Savage nodded gloomily. At Malpais he had suffered because they had shut him out from the communal activities of the pueblo, in civilized London he was suffering because he could never escape from those communal activities, never be quietly alone.”
Page 217-218:
“But God’s the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic. If you had a God…”
“My dear young friend,” said Mustapha Mond, “civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended–there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren’t any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There’s no such thing as a divided allegiance; you’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren’t any temptations to resist…”
Eugenics – the word Javi used when we were describing to him the manufactured test tube babies bred into a caste-system of lower to higher individuals. Javi liked the idea of the injections that keep you young and healthy for 60 years, but did not like the “eugenics” in Brave New World. Smart lad!
Glad I read this book. It made me realize that yearning for a care-free, easy life of comfort and pleasure is not good. Human beings need struggles and hopes and dreams. We need meaningful work. We need to be able to pursue art, science, and religion. We need to love and be loved. The chief end of man: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.