D's Book Club - Brave New World, Part I

I had such a wonderful reading experience this week with the lovable Mr. Potter that I headed off to the bookstore yesterday in search my next conquest. After purchasing several books, I decided to start with Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I chose this book because it was required reading in my Freshman English class. Each student was required to do a project – a movie poster – for the book. I did not read the book. I did the best I could with all I knew which was the title, Brave New World. I created a movie poster with a spaceship flying through the galaxy. I didn’t even get an ‘F’ for that project – I got a zero.

A couple of facts about the author – Huxley was born in England in the late 1800s and was nearly blind. He taught French stuff at Eton and had a few promising students – one being Eric Blair, who would later morph into Animal Farm’s author George Orwell. Although Huxley despised mass culture and popular entertainment, his influences on them are surprising. For example The Doors came up with their name through one of Huxley’s super kooky books – The Doors of Perception. He also appeared on the cover of The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club album. In his later years Huxley befriended Dr. Timothy Leary, the creator of LSD (Leary subsequently was arrested and at one time in a jail cell next to the infamous Charles Manson). Huxley enjoyed his hallucinogens, not only LSD but peyote and mescaline as well. I say good for him! What do you think a blind person sees when they trip?

Onto the book! A few pages in I realized the book has nothing to do about space ships – it’s all about sex and drugs (before there was rock ‘n roll). In the future, people are no longer ‘born’ as they are now; they are instead ‘decanted’ from test tubes. The caste system is in full effect, dividing people into Alphas, Betas, Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons at decantation. Children are put though immense physically and metal conditioning. For example, peeps who are destined to be iron workers are subjected to extreme heat while in the tube, thus causing them to want to work in that type of field. Some torture is extremely cruel – shocking Epsilon babies when they move toward flowers or bright colors. For years children are subjected to sleep teaching or hypnopaedia, in which they are taught to dislike others who are outside of their caste. Most people in the future are sterile and the ones who are not use birth control. The idea of pregnancy, of mother, father, or family is taboo and considered to be smut. The future holds a very hedonistic society with slogans like Everyone belongs to each other. At young ages children run around the playground, naked, playing rudimentary sex games. People are encouraged to take holiday from reality by using soma – One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.

That’s about as far as I am but I can definitely say I do not feel this book is appropriate for high school English. Society wonders why our youth are into drugs and desensitized toward sex. My guess – they read Brave New World in high school.

I leave you with this thought of contradictions which I can equivocate to my life:
God is, but at the same time God is not. The Universe is governed by blind chance and at the same time by a providence with ethical preoccupations. Suffering is gratuitous and pointless, but also valuable and necessary. The universe is an imbecile sadist, but also, simultaneously, the most benevolent of parents. Everything is rigidly predetermined but the will is perfectly free. ~Aldous Huxley~