Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

[bluerev002]

In order to get into English III Honors next year the students at Indio High were assigned summer projects.
Two books:

1984
Brave New World
and a poem The hollow men


Havent read 1984 yet, but I am almost finished with Brave New world.

Its about some time in the future where people are not born but made. The goverment makes mass numbers of humans a day and program them for ONE job and thats teh job they get. These Betas, as they are called by the co. that makes them, are programed to love the work they do and can do no other job.

From the begining you can see that this book is a tad bit sexual. They talk about nine-year-old-children "having each other" adn they find it funny that in our time we would find that highly immoral. The goverment has a slogan "Everyone belongs to everyone else" so it wouldnt be strange for someone to have somoen diffrent people each night.

Also these Betas are taught by hypnopadia (something like that) were they are told everything the govt. wants them to know in their sleep. They all know the same thing, think the same way, and if anyone is feeling sad they take "soma" a special drug that calmst your nerves distributed to everyone by the govt.

A couple of the characters are Bernard Marx and Lenina. I'm not sure why they are called that yet, but maybe itll say by the time I finish teh book.

It reminds me a lot of "the Giver"

So, pick this copy up and if you dont like the ending, dont blame me cuz I havent read it yet ^.^

[Sabocat]

I loved that book. The interesting thing about it to me, was that it was written in the late twenties or early thirties before a lot of the stuff in there had even been invented.

Huxley, seems to have hit the nail on the head with regards to the forecast of civilization and society.

[bluerev002]

Finished it last night

The story starts taking a plot when Bernard Marx and Lenina decide to spend a week together in New Mexico. While there they go visit a reservation of "savages". There they meet a young savage named John. John was born from a Beta woman and was raised there among the normal ppl.

Anyways, John ends up going back with Marx and Lenina. John doesnt like the new place and is starteled by the people taking soma and all the rules of censorship.

He decides to free the people along with Marx and another friend (cant spell da name). They get arrested and Marx and the otehr friend get sent away to foreign islands while John is forced to stay for "scientific reaserch".

He ends up runing away though and the ending is kinda weird...I'm not too sure what happend to John, but I guess the author leaves that to our imagination.

Its a good book and Disgustapated is right when he said that Huxley "hit the nail on the head with regards to the forecast of civilization and society".

Its easy to read and i really liked it.... a book recomended by the monkey with the mispelled name :)

[bluerev002]

Ok I guess none of you have read it, but IF anyone has read it, answer me this.

Do you guys know WHY the author chose to have everyone sleeping with everyone else? I mean, is it really necessary? What was the point of it?

[apathy maybe]

for the same reason that he gave everybody pills to suck. If you can fuck anytime you want you are hardly going to have sexual tensions are you. It also is just one more thing that is moraly wrong in our society. Huxley has taken the things that we (or at least British society in the 30's) find good and made them into bad things (marrage, live birth, nuclear family etc). Another good read is Brave New World Revisited.

I started a discussion here
http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/top...um=13&topic=961 (http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/topic.pl?forum=13&topic=961)
about whether it is a good world or not.

[bluerev002]

Yeah, I know Ive already responded to it :biggrin:

[apathy maybe]

it's for the others who read this thread. I know you have bluerev002 but for instance has Disgustapated?

[Rastafari]

I thought it was great fiction. I liked when John attacked that kid in the hospital, in fact...I love the whole book

[antieverything]

I actually though the book was somewhat tedious...I read Brave New World Revisited first and I liked that even if his projections didn't turn out to be true (no, we aren't getting stupider or more genetically inferior).

[Mogwai]

it freaked me out. aldous huxley had too much time on his hands i think... i much prefer orwell/camus

[mentalbunny]

My village is mentioned in Brave New World, I live quite close to where the Savage supposedly went to live near the end. I found it interesting, scary and all that but I don't think it really adds anything to society. When I first read it I thought it was pretty incredsible but at the time I had a huge hunger for distopian books, like 1984, Brave New World, and another one called The Lathe of Heaven, which is quite good. Now I'm more of a non-fiction person.

[Fever]

If you like this book i would reccomend the book Island Also by aldous huxley. It is very interesting because while Brave New World is his distopia Island is his idea of a perfect world.