Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was assigned reading during an ethics class I took recently, specifically for a lesson on Utilitarianism and teleological thinking. Since no paper or report on the text was required for the class, my review here is not one of high philosophy or anything of the sort. Instead, I intend just to pick out a few interesting points of the story and leave it at that.

First, I was surprised by the total absence of genuine robots in this novel of the future. Perhaps the modern paperback cover that’s been sitting on my shelf for so many years is what threw me, but before reading the book for myself, I had always been under the impression that Huxley’s dystopian outlook was one which resulted from an overabundance of robotics and, therefore, a loss of humanity. Certainly, the angle exists: human beings bred in bottles with additives to determine their statuses in life with the end result being armies of soulless, robot-like drones; but they are still human. In fact, the most mechanized product of Huxley’s civilized world was the helicopter, something I was surprised to see so often used in this 1932 release.

Second, I was intrigued by the Fordian religion of Huxley’s future world. A mixed concept of God and Jesus exists in the outlying, uncivilized country, but where the Alphas and Betas dwell, it’s “Our Ford” alone who held the future. Observers cross themselves in reverence by making “a sign of the T on [the] stomach” (21), and his name has even been turned into a cuss word where it’s fitting. But perhaps the most audacious description of this new religion is the “service” in which twelve directors enjoy a three-part communion service with soma tablets (narcotic pills) replacing the bread and soma-laced strawberry ice cream replacing the wine. “I drink to my annihilation!” the adherents swear before quaffing the loving cup the first time. “I drink to the Greater Being,” they say before the second. “I drink to the imminence of His Coming!” they say before the third, as the narcotic hits their system and they hear Him in the doorway. This causes them all to dance in their excitement, singing the classic song, “Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, Kiss the girls and make them One. Boys at One with girls at peace; Orgy porgy gives release”, at which point the religious orgy commences (66-69). Later, during the theme-focused dialogue between the Controller and the Savage, the truth of that brave new world comes out:

“People believe in God because they’ve been conditioned to.”

“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. (196)

Third, I love the slew of nonsense statements that oddly make perfect sense in the context of the story. Huxley’s world brims with life because of it, and his strength as a writer shines in return. “All men are physico-chemically equal…Besides, even Epsilons perform indispensable services.” (60) “Remember one cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments.” (73) “You can’t play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.” (197) These were a few of my favorites and, I do believe, they would make fantastic T-shirts.

Fourth, I liked the dramatic shifts Huxley uses in his prose. For example, how the apparent protagonist of the story shifted from Bernard, the almost-woke Alpha who first glimpsed the nonsense of his present world, to Jon, the Savage. This shift was unexpected, a twist that kept me reading. Likewise, I appreciated how the threat of Iceland became, once explained, an invitation for escape. Where at one time Bernard feared exile away from the place he hated most, he finally came to realize that in exile he would be in good company with many other like-minded folks who hated their present world.

Fifth, Huxley did well to fit one of his major themes into the musings of the Controller as he disproved of a paper titled, “A New Theory of Biology.” He thinks to himself:

“Once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose—well, you didn’t know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition 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. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true.” (145)

Sixth, and in line with the previous, I really enjoyed the dialogue between the Controller and the Savage in which they argue over the value of the old v. the new, something that I think speaks volumes about the trappings of our modern times:

“But why is [Shakespeare] prohibited?” asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else.

The Controller shrugged his shoulders. “Because it’s old; that’s the chief reason. We haven’t any use for old things here.”

“Even when they’re beautiful?”

“Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.” “But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where there’s nothing but helicopters flying about and you feel the people kissing.” He made a grimace…”Othello’s good, Othello’s better than those feelies.”

“Of course it is,” the Controller agreed. “But that’s the price we have to pay for stability. 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.”

“But they don’t mean anything.”

“They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience.”

“But they’re… they’re told by an idiot.” (182, 184)

Finally, I have to comment on the final scene at the lighthouse. If ever I were drawn to watch a cinematic version of this book, it would be for the grotesqueness of this final scene: the whip, the visitors, the attack, even the orgy, and even the end. I was shocked and strangely satisfied by the conclusion. Any author willing to end his book with a suicide and an ellipses recognizes the boldness of the work he’s just completed. Huxley knew what he was doing, even though he proved to be a crackpot who apparently viewed eugenics as the best option for warding off overpopulation—as if he was actually in support of the dystopia he’d written about! I’ve only read synopses of his later work, Brave New World Revisited, but if that’s the direction he actually writes, then this classic novel should be to us less of a warning against a terrible future and more of a warning against “great thinkers” who can go off the deep end.

Overall, I truly enjoyed this book. It had many more innuendos that I had anticipated (i.e. the erotic play in the bushes at the day care), but I suppose it goes with the territory. Where it stands in my list of favorite dystopian-type novels against works like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Lord of the Flies, or others, I’m not quite sure. I’ll let it steep for a while and see how it stands up in memory.

©2020 E.T.

Read More Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Novels:

• The Last New Yorkers by George Allen England (1911)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
• The Last Ship by William Brinkley (1988)
• Minority Report and Other Stories by Philip K. Dick (2004)
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
• The Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins (2008)
• Son of Heaven (series) by David Wingrove (2011)
• Contamination (series) by T.W. Piperbrook (2013)
• Yellowstone (series) by Bobby Akart (2018)
• The Giver by Lois Lowry, adapted by P. Craig Russell (2019)
• Fairy Godparents: Raising a Fairy Child by Indahari Setyo (2020)