Brave New World

This book is not easy to review due to the complex and multifaceted nature of its narrative allowing a wide range of interpretations. It also doesn't help that Huxley himself had changed the aim of the story during the process of creating it. I can't blame him; 1920s and 30s were quite a turbulent time.

My opinion of the book shifted a lot while reading it, swinging from “a timeless masterpiece” to “a dated antic” at times. By the end of the day, I do think the book is marvelous, even if some aspects of it are a bit old-fashioned for our early 21st century society.

You are emerged into a dystopian society with a prominent caste system where people are conditioned from their very conception to fulfil a pre-destined social role. Some are raised to be successful public figures, others - simple factory workers. There are certain rules of what the populace are supposed to like and what they're not, the entertainment and culture are heavily censored, and at the core of the social values are consumerism and promiscuity.

We do get a character who represents “the old ways”, whose morals and ideals are juxtaposed against the ones of the world at large, but the key brilliance of this book is that it doesn't necessarily tell you that one is better than the other. If anything, I personally got a feeling that both are equally terrible, yet have their own advantages. One offers social stability, the other - closeness to nature, but both constrict you to certain social rules and punish insubordination. The old-world people of New Mexico seem to be even more cruel, or, as David Bradshaw writes in his 1993 Introduction to Brave New World, “John and Linda's ostracism amids the racial prejudice of Malpais [...] is far more intolerable than the predicament of Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson in the World State.”

I also found it interesting that the character who is supposed to represent Edwardian morals treats others terribly. He claims the people of the New World to be unhappy and morally bankrupt, but he's the one who's miserable and violent.

Among the things I didn't like were certain characters, who were nasty enough to ruin some of my enjoyment. They are, nonetheless, necessary, I think, even if I hated them. I'm also still not sure how I feel about including sleeping with multiple partners into the notion of dystopia. It annoyed me greatly at first, but then I had a conversation with my boyfriend and he had a good point - perhaps Huxley didn't necessarily oppose the idea. It was enough that it was shocking to the Edwardian society and different from the moral norms of the time.

All in all this book is definitely a worthwhile read, and the three introductions included in the edition I own, as well as Huxley's biography, really add to the overall enjoyment of it.