Book 25 - Brave New World

Originally posted 04-06-07!

Title: Brave New World
Author: Aldous Huxley
Pages: 259
Grade: A

Summary: (I like to steal from Amazon, I do I do.)

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. Huxley foreshadowed many of the practices and gadgets we take for granted today--let's hope the sterility and absence of individuality he predicted aren't yet to come.

My thoughts: One of those books I actually finished in a day. Largely because it kept me interested enough to well not really put it down. Something about the fact that there is no true happiness I think was possibly the biggest thing I got from this. And I think it might well be true. With free will, the human race will never be happy. Because having the right to love, to care, to mourn, to solitude, to separation. All of these things....will at one point leave you unhappy. Relationships end, people die, isolation leaves you feeling well alone. But not having the right to those things....to be blindly happy, believing you belong to any and everyone. Everyone has a station they were mentally and physically developed to fit.. It's not happiness. It's a manufactured reality. There is no peace...no forever happiness. There is only this life or that life. And I think I prefer this one. Savage that that might make me. Heh.