BRAVE NEW WORLD – Book review by Carmen Tadeo (Group: B2.2, Mo/We/Fri 19:30 )
Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932.
Well, I’m not going to summarize the plot, because I highly recommend you to read it. It’s not an easy reading because there are a lot of technical words but if you like science-fiction or even ethical issues, I think you will enjoy it.
I am only going to give you a general idea about the world that Huxley imagined.
This is a world of complete social stability. The new human beings are created in a laboratory, we are not born anymore, so we haven’t got a mother or a father. We are only citizens. Besides, in the laboratory they divide the society into different groups, alphas, betas, gammas, deltas and epsilons… And depending on your caste, your group, they give you different characteristics, by modifying the DNA. For example, epsilon is the lower caste, they are manual workers, so they don’t need to be too intelligent. Well, in these lower castes they use the Bokanovsky process to create twins; for example, all the workers in a factory are exactly alike, they are twins. So here you have stability again.
Well, I have to say something about hynopaedia too. Hypnopaedia is a method that they use to condition your behavior completely. They repeat the same record once and again while you are asleep. With this method, they make everybody happy about being part of their own caste or they encourage them to be materialistic or consumers. Actually, they use this method in all aspects of life, they have sex conditioning, death conditioning, hygiene conditioning… All their values are controlled by the government.
And they do know that they have been conditioned but they don’t care because they are absolutely happy. And if in a given moment they don’t feel like that, then they take a drug that is called Soma, they go on soma-holiday and when they come back they feel fine again. In this world you can be always happy. In fact, you must be always happy.
But the point is that, there are still some reservations in the world where the people are like they used to be, well that’s not completely true, they are more like a tribe, savages, but they continue with the old values, family, marriage, religion. And the book is about a savage who comes from the old world and is horrified when he gets to know the new one.
Well, there are lots of things to say about this world because the author wrote about all the possible details, but I haven’t got enough time so… if your curiosity has been aroused I recommend you to read it.
Finally, if you want to know something about the author, well…
He was born in England in 1984 in a family of writers, scientists and teachers, so he received an excellent education. He studied literature in Oxford but he was interested in science too. He wrote a lot of essays, poems and novels, but he really achieved success after the publication of this novel, Brave New World. He was worried about the impact that new technologies could have on society, and although his books could be read as simple science-fiction there is always an ethical issue behind. For example, I think that the main point of this book is: What do you prefer, to be free or to be happy forever? At the beginning I thought that I would prefer to be free, but I’m not so sure now, because, you know, being happy forever is something difficult to reject.
Well, that’s all. Thank you for your attention and goodbye.
