Brave New World
Utopian/dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley first published in 1932. Set in a fictional society in the future which claims to be “perfect”, but is not.
Setting
The novel is set in AD 2540 where most of the world is united in the “World State” where everyone is happy. There is no more natural procreation but every person is cloned and conditioned in so called hatcheries. There they are also put into one of five castes (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon). These different castes define the type of work they will be doing for the rest of their life. For example Alphas are considered the new world leaders and intellectual elite, whereas Epsilons are created with low intelligence (by oxygen deprivation) to do menial labour. All children are taught by a hypnopaedic process, i.e. they subconsciously learn by listening to a voice while they sleep.
The two main forms of recreation are on the one hand a drug called soma, which is a kind of hallucinogen but without a hangover and is produced and developed by the World State, and on the other hand sex, which is encouraged from very early on. The idea of family and/or marriage are considered a taboo. Life expectancy is about 60 but death is not feared because there are no family ties and everyone is sure and knows that society will continue the way it always has.
In several locations on the planet are so called reservations where “savages” live. They are not submitted to the conditioning and the drug but left on their own accord with several “strange rituals” like religion or ageing.
Plot
In the first chapters the reader gets a glimpse into life in the "Brave New World". The reader is also introduced to Lenina, a vaccination worker in the hatchery and Bernard, an Alpha and psychologist, who has an inferiority complex because he is a bit shorter than the “average” Alpha. Bernard takes Lenina on a holiday to a reservation in New Mexico in order to seduce her. The seduction fails because Lenina is disgusted by the aged people in the reservation and she has forgotten her soma rations. Both encounter an old woman called Linda and her son John. Linda was a former citizen of the World State but got lost in the reservation and separated from her group. She turns out to be the date of Bernard's boss. Both Linda and John are considered outcasts in the reservation because Linda's conditioning still works so she wants to have sex with all the men in the village and John is an outcast because of his mother's deeds. Bernard arranges permissions for John and his mother to leave the reservation. On their return Bernard confronts his boss, because he wanted to relocate Bernard to Iceland, with his former lover and his son. John is the new top story in London society and even Bernard with his inferiority complex can shine but it is only for a very shot period. John on the other hand is disgusted by the society of the World State and is heartbroken when his mother dies in a hospital. The workers in the hospital feel sick about John's display of sorrow and so John tries to start a riot by throwing the worker's soma rations out of the window. The riot is subdued by the police via soma-gas. John, Bernard and his only friend Helmholtz (also a friend of John) are sent to the office of Mustapha Mond, who is one of the controllers of the World State. Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled to foreign islands, where they can “do as the please” without influencing the population. John and Mustapha engage in philosophical discussions. After that John starts to live in an old lighthouse in isolation from society, but this life is cut short when a video is shown of him flagellating himself. A large group of people gathers around his lighthouse to see the savage but the sight of Lenina in the crowd is too much for John and so he attacks her. This outbreak of emotion triggers an orgy of sex and soma in which even John participates. In the morning the crowd returns only to see that John has committed suicide by hanging himself in an attempt to escape from society.
Important Characters
John (the Savage): He is an outsider from a reservation in New Mexico and the son of Linda and the director of the London Hatchery.
Bernard Marx: Psychologist and Alpha male who has the feeling of not fitting in because of his shorter stature, which is common for lower castes. His last name probably recalls Karl Marx.
Helmholtz Watson: He is an Alpha male and lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering. He, like Bernard, is discontent with the World State, but his discontent has more to do with the fact that he thinks his work is meaningless, than Bernard's complains about his size. His name resembles that of German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and Dr Watson, the close friend of Sherlock Holmes.
Lenina Crowne: She is a vaccination worker at the Hatchery. She is the focus of desire by many men, including Bernard and John. She is often seen as rather unorthodox since she dates one man for a longer period of time (in the beginning she dates Bernard but later develops a huge crush on John). Name probably alludes to Soviet revolutionary Lenin.
Sources
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974.
www.huxley.net
http://www.online-literature.com/aldous_huxley/brave_new_world/