"Brave New World" Aldous Huxley

I first read “Brave New World” as a senior in high school 33 years ago. Of course, genetic engineering was not discussed in class back then, but the predestination programming described by Huxley seems more likely now, and hence, more frightening. I don’t remember the class discussions, but I can guess we talked about predestination and making choices for ourselves. I was in Honors English and most of us were heading off to college and deciding what our majors would be. I’m sure we all thought that we were free to make the choices on our own, but one has to ask the question if we hadn’t been in Honors English would we even be considering college, and what methods of predestination brought us to Honors English to begin with. The only part of the book I remember well is the beginning where the students are touring the Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre and learning the technology behind predestination and the caste system. During the tour they are confronted with the unpleasant language of home, parenthood, and chastity. I was sexually inexperienced and very naïve in high school, so the sexual behavior of 632 A.F. did not make much of an impression on me then. I am just a little curious about what the sexual games are that the children are playing in the book.

I find it interesting listening to “Brave New World” with its implicit comments on British society from the 30s while simultaneously reading “The Locked Room” by Wahlöö and Sjöwall and their overt commentary of the socialist society of Sweden in the 60s. The Gammas and Deltas of the future are supposedly happy with their lot, yet serve a vital purpose as everyone learns through hypnopaedia. In Wahlöö and Sjöwall’s Sweden there are many people who no longer serve a purpose and are abandoned by society. In the London of 632 A.F. no one seems to age, and some people are left to die at an early age. Children are programmed to accept death as a natural part of life, but they do so by parading the students around hospitals for the dying. I found this an interesting counterpoint to the high profile of suicide that can be found in the Martin Beck books. It was not clear to me how the lives of the people in London in "Brave New World" end. This seems to be a plot hole, or something discussed at the beginning of the book that I have now forgotten.

I found the technology in "Brave New World" interesting. Since I was not alive in the 1930s, I don't know what the prevailing thought of the time was, but I do have some idea of the technology of the time. I found it interesting that Huxley envisioned a world where humans can be gestated outside of the womb and their development so closely controlled. It is possible that a common idea at the time was that being pregnant was necessary for the health of a woman, and in Huxley's "World," women have simulated pregnancies to obtain the healthful benefits from it. On the other hand, he has put the responsibility and obligation for birth control in the hands of the women instead of sharing the responsibility between the genders, and so he does not stray far from the stereotypical male/female roles of the time.

The society of London is controlled by removing thinkers--there are no philosophers, religious figures, artists or true scientists. Whenever someone develops new ideas in any of these areas, they are removed from London to an island. This seems weak to me, and it is as if he wants to create a society where such people are suppressed, but suppressed in the kindliest way possible, a far cry from the suppression of ideas executed by the soviet system.

Having finished the book, I strongly suspect that I didn't finish it in high school. I am sure that I would not have had the patience for the philosophical commentary by Mustapha Mond toward the end of the book. I also know that I would have missed the majority of the references to Shakespeare at that time and would have just thought that John the Savage's language was more formal than that of London. Regardless, I am sure I missed Huxley's message. High school seems to be a strange time to try to convince students that uniformity might be a problem for society when students are trying as hard as they can to fit in, at least I was.

I saw that Huxley wrote a nonfiction follow up to "Brave New World" where he said the world seems to be moving faster toward his future image than he expected. At least in the United States, I see our levels of consumption to be similar to those he predicts. I am listening to "Confessions of a Shopaholic" by Sophie Kinsella now and it is like Rebecca's manic buying is hypnopaedia induced. On the other hand, labor is different in Huxley's world than in our own. In the future London, mechanization is eschewed for worker-friendly methods. Elevators still have operators and the land is still worked by hand. Huxley created a world based on the human-driven assembly line model of Henry Ford, but does not see machines taking over the work of the humans. This leads me to believe that he hadn't thought out the economics of the world he created very well, and for that matter, who does the consumption of his world benefit?

There was one aspect of this future world that mirrors our own in a disconcerting way. Count the number of air freshener commercials on television and tell me this is any different than the obsession with scents in "Brave New World."