Brave New World

Huxley's classic Brave New World is a study in happiness. He starts with the concept of making everyone happy and then shows us that there is always unhappiness in humanity no matter what we try to do to abolish it. In eliminating all of the things that cause us pain, this society also eliminates all that could cause joy. Stripped of all emotion, they are left with a sensual world. This novel is not a prediction. It is a study of human nature. "To err is human." Therefore, we must accept our nightmares if we want to have dreams. There is no such thing as a human utopia.

I read a review someone gave of this book that said Brave New World is "boring" and "absurdly weak." The review stated that "the general portrait of the future is very brief and full of lacunes, [and] one of the characters spent the entire book just quoting Shakespeare." I disagree strongly with this view. I did not find this book to be at all boring; in fact, I thought it was extremely well composed and amazingly detailed in its view of a dystopian future. The above mentioned reviewer's statement that The Savage quotes Shakespeare too much is absurd. Huxley cleverly uses Shakespeare's writing to show the distinct difference between our society today (or how it was in the 1930's, rather) and this anti-utopia that he has created. Shakespeare is known as the greatest writer of all time in the English language for a reason: he wrote about the nature and lives of people in such a way that we can all relate to it. Shakespeare so gracefully characterized human nature; the point that Huxley is trying to make with Shakespeare is that this "Brave New World" has been so dehumanized that they can no longer even relate to basic universal truths such as love, jealousy and unhappiness. It is an extremely powerful way of making his point about his dystopian society. While Huxley's character development is not his strong point, the picture that he paints of a future society is frightening. Ignore the reviewer I referred to. Read this book.

The strength of the novel is in its focus on the basic characteristics of humanity, it offers to the reader a glimpse at the future but more than that, it offers a very intricate look at humanity and what it means to be human. In an age of of corrective surgery and self help books, A Brave New World lets us see the flip side to this, we can reach an understanding through Huxley's writing that the everyday complaints about appearance, pain and attitude are exactly the beautiful things that make one "truly" human. He is a genius and it is through his writing that we can avoid such a superficial downfall. We are the savages behind the cage, but it is the words of Faulkner that come to mind mankind will not merely endure, we shall prevail.

The purpose of this book was to inform us on how life would be like if we became chemically and emotionally dependent on material values. Brave New World is Huxley's opinion of how the world would be like if everything was perfect and conflict never arose. This is a wonderful and interesting piece of work, a true masterpiece of literature.

Brave Aldous Huxley's Book! I have read it 18 years ago (I was a teenager, 12 years!). I am reading it again and I can not stop. I am from Brazil, a third world country, but I can see the same phenomenas you found in Brave New World..