![]() ![]() Returning from a tourist trip to a Mexican Reservation – one of the resource-poor areas of the Earth deemed unworthy of ‘civilisation’ – and anxious to raise his image, he introduces a Shakespeare-quoting ‘savage’, John, to the ‘Brave New World’. Only occasionally does the process fail, as with Bernard Marx, a miserably insecure ‘Alpha-Plus’ who lacks the physical stature that should accompany his high IQ. Unpleasant feelings are swiftly aborted by a voluntary hit of soma, a wonder drug that provides a ‘holiday’ from consciousness, sustaining the contented inertia that preserves world stability. There are no familial ties, and promiscuity is obligatory. Desires are immediately fulfilled: ‘You can’t have a lasting civilisation without plenty of pleasant vices,’ says one of the ten local World Controllers, Mustapha Mond. A rigid caste system is blithely accepted by all, from Epsilon Semi-Moron factory workers to scientists at the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. (‘After Ford’), it describes a new ‘World State’ in which human clones, conditioned through hypnopaedia to perpetually inhabit ‘an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations’, support a meticulously controlled system of consumption and production. ![]() I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. In recent years dystopian novels have exploded in popular, with young adult books like Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games and Veronica Roth’s Divergent being expanded into incredibly successful series and film franchises.‘But I don’t want comfort. In its focus on the evils of totalitarianism and the use of technology to support these evils, Brave New World most closely resembles George Orwell's 1984, whose dystopia enforces conformity through methods like surveillance and torture. Brave New World is a dystopian novel, which extrapolated from the rise of technology, science, and totalitarianism in the 1930s to imagine a future totalitarian state in which humanity had been robbed of all free choice and were forced into happiness through the manipulation of genetics and psychology. In addition, a number of writers wrote dystopian novels, in which they imagined the worst possible society, using it to criticize their current world. But Utopia was the book that gave the genre its name, and numerous writers over the years wrote their own utopian novels. Utopia was not the first book to imagine a perfect society Plato's Republic, for example, does the same thing. Its title meant either "good place" or "no place," in Greek, and the book described an ideal society that More used in order to criticize his own society. In 1516, Sir Thomas More published a book called Utopia. In 1963, the same year he died, Huxley published his last book, Island, which depicted a utopia in contrast to the dystopia of Brave New World. His attempt to write screenplays failed, but he developed an interest in hallucinogenic drugs that led to a book about his drug experiences, The Doors of Perception. As war loomed in Europe, Huxley, a pacifist, moved to California, along with his wife, Maria, and their son, Matthew. Huxley published Brave New World, his most successful novel, in 1932. He wrote prolifically throughout the 1920's, publishing numerous essays, sketches, caricatures, and four novels. Though his hopes of a medical career were dashed when an eye disease almost blinded him at 16, he soon built a career as a writer. He attended Eton and Oxford and was skilled and knowledgeable in both literature and science. ![]() Huxley was a thoughtful, imaginative child, though his family teased him for his grumbling disposition. Huxley’s father was the editor of Cornhill magazine, while his mother was related to the English poet Matthew Arnold. His grandfather, a biologist, was instrumental in popularizing Darwin's theory of evolution. Aldous Huxley was born into a family of noted scientists and writers.
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