At my (then) teenaged son’s urging, I put Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World (First Harper
Perennial Modern Classics edition, 2006, first published by Harper &
Brothers, 1932) on my reading list.
He had been required to read it for a high school English class and was
deeply moved and disturbed by it.
The book finally rose to the top of my reading queue, and I can see why,
as my son is a fine artist (painting and illustration), he felt the way he did
about the novel.
As a poet, I share my son’s revulsion at the dystopian
world depicted in the novel, but as a scientist and physician I am impressed by
Huxley’s prescience. In the world
of the novel, war, disease, famine, poverty, and even the effects of aging and
the fear of death have been eradicated by an all-powerful world order ruled by
a loyal elite. Through a
disturbingly accurate prediction of the direction of biology, eugenics, and
psychology for someone writing in 1932, the inhabitants of Huxley’s world also
are devoid of jealousy, romantic love, appreciation of high art and literature,
personal ambition, and loneliness.
Taking a psychedelic wonder drug called soma solves any rare breakthrough dysphoria. There is also no room in this world for
God as we understand Him. His role
has been replaced by the reverence of Henry Ford; the cross of Christ replaced
by the T (a reference to Ford’s model T).
There are no family ties or obligations in this “brave
new world,” as all its human inhabitants are bred in laboratories. Acceptance of one’s assigned lot in
life (there is a strict caste system) is bred into each individual. This acceptance is hypnotically
reinforced, and any residual rebelliousness is quashed by soma. Happiness (of a
sort) is therefore universal, and since “everybody belongs to everybody,”
meaningless sex with anyone one desires is easily sought and freely given.
The novel really gets interesting when the bastard son of
a high-ranking official is discovered in one of the uncivilized reservations of
humanity, who basically live as the American Indians did long ago. “John Savage,” or simply “The Savage,”
an eighteen-year-old who has read all of the works of Shakespeare (one of many
forbidden authors), is brought to civilization as an experiment. He becomes an immediate curiosity and
sensation and is given immediate and unwanted celebrity. He is at once fascinated and filled
with revulsion by the civilized world, and his inability to adjust eventually
leads to a self-imposed exile.
The edition of Brave
New World that I read is fortunate to have a “PS” containing a
transcription of a letter from Huxley to George Orwell from 1949, the year 1984 was published. In it, Huxley predicts that humanity is
headed toward something Orwellian in the not-too-distant future, but that such
a world will be temporary, a stepping-stone. Huxley predicts that rule by the threat and application of
pain depicted by Orwell will eventually evolve into rule by the elimination of
pain. This “utopia” will come at
the terrible price described--a world without passion, poetry, painting,
politics, personality, and preference--a cowardly new world. Ford forbid!
