What kind of book is brave new world

This organized release of sexual urges undercuts passion, the intense feeling of one person for another, as the individuals subordinate even their own sexual pleasure to the supposed joy of their society's unity. At the Solidarity Service, Bernard finds the exercise degrading, just as anyone clinging to any idealism about sex would be revolted.

John's sensitive feelings about love suffer even from the representation of such an orgy at the feelies. Significantly, it is the morning after his own experience of "orgy-porgy" that John commits suicide. His most private, cherished sense of love and of self, he feels, has been violated.

In Huxley's dystopia, the drug soma also serves to keep individuals from experiencing the stressful negative effects of conflicts that the society cannot prevent. Pain and stress — grief, humiliation, disappointment — representing uniquely individual reactions to conflict still occur sometimes in the brave new world. The people of the brave new world "solve" their conflict problems by swallowing a few tablets or taking an extended soma -holiday, which removes or sufficiently masks the negative feelings and emotions that other, more creative, problem-solving techniques might have and which cuts off the possibility of action that might have socially disruptive or revolutionary results.

The society, therefore, encourages everyone to take soma as a means of social control by eliminating the affects of conflict. John's plea to the Deltas to throw away their soma , then, constitutes a cry for rebellion that goes unheeded. Soma- tized people do not know their own degradation. They are not even fully conscious that they are individuals. Both Bernard and John struggle against the society's constant efforts to undermine their individuality, but one character reveals a deeper understanding of the stakes than the other.

Bernard rails loudly about the inhumanity of the system. His outrage stems from the injustices he suffers personally, but he apparently is unwilling or unable to fathom a debate or course of action against the malady because he is an Alpha Plus upon whom the process has been at least partially successful.

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Get full reviews, ratings, and advice delivered weekly to your inbox. User Reviews Parents say Kids say. Adult Written by meinhare October 3, Everything in Context I've read some of these reviews, and I think there needs to be some context here. The sexual content in the book is exaggerated but not explicit. Continue reading. Report this review. Parent of a 7, 9, 11, 14, and year-old Written by jgstanding September 10, I get where the author is going This book is not for children if you care about their morality.

It degrades sex, love, family and parents. There are things in here I just don't want my ki Teen, 15 years old Written by xviolettax June 11, A bit hard to follow The first time I read this book was as a fifth grader and although it was interesting, I stopped reading before the middle because it was difficult for me to co Teen, 14 years old Written by June bug I February 2, Too much inappropriate content There was so much talk about sex and the process of cloning people through a very sexualized process.

There is way too much talk about sex for younger people. What's the story? Is it any good? Talk to your kids about Our editors recommend. Classic dystopian novel about life under constant scrutiny. Animal Farm. Classic satirical allegory about the abuse of power. A Clockwork Orange. A violent meditation on violence; graphic and disturbing. For kids who love science fiction and dystopian novels.

Science Fiction Books. Books Like the Hunger Games. Misfits and Underdogs. Science and Nature. About these links Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization, earns a small affiliate fee from Amazon or iTunes when you use our links to make a purchase.

Read more. Nov 17, Stephen rated it liked it Shelves: classics , world-in-the-shitter , science-fiction , audiobook. I need to parse my rating of this book into the good or great , the bad and the very fugly because I thought aspects of it were inspired genius and parts of it were dreggy , boring and living near the border of awful.

In the end, the wowness and importance of the novel's ideas as well as the segments that I thoroughly enjoyed carried the book to a strong 3. The narrative device employed by Huxley of having the Director of Hatchery and Conditioning provide a walking tour to students around the facility as a way to knowledge up the reader on the societal basics was perfect. This was as good a use of infodumping exposition as I had come across in some time and I was impressed both with the content and delivery method.

The reader gets a crash course in world and its history in a way that fit nicely into the flow of the narrative without ever feeling forced. This was easily the best part of the novel for me, and Huxley's mass production-based society of enforced hedonism and anti-emotion was very compelling.

Sort of like Now, long jumping to the end of the novel I also thought the final "debate" near the story's climax between John the "savage" and Mustapha Mond, the World Controller, was exceptional.

Thus, a superior 4. Throughout this entire portion of the book, all I kept thinking was The only purpose of this long, long LONG section seems to be to allow the reader to see Bernard Marx do a complete in his views on the society once he finds himself in the role of celebrity by virtue of his relationship with John the savage.

Sorry, this just did not strike me as a big enough payoff for this dry, plodding section. It was a test of endurance to get through this portion of the book, so I'm being generous when I give it a weak 2.

I could just have easily summed it up by just saying Bottom-line, I think this is a book that should be read. It's important book and there is much brilliance here.

Plus, it is short enough that the stale boring segments aren't too tortuous to get through. However, as far as the triumvirate of classic dystopian science fiction goes View all comments. Luk4s I'd always argue the champ out of the classic dystopian novels is The Process by Kafka. But thats just me. Overall I did enjoy Fahrenheit or I'd always argue the champ out of the classic dystopian novels is The Process by Kafka.

It's by no means bad, just not as groundshatteringly good as the others Jo This is my sentiment exactly! Aug 02, Kemper rated it really liked it Shelves: sci-fi , famous-books , playing-god , , future-is-now , dystopia. The following review contains humor. If you read it and actually think that I'm being critical of Huxley, try reading it again.

Here's a hint. Look for the irony of the italicized parts when compared to the previous statements. I have to apologize for this review. The concept of this book was so outlandish that I think it made my mind wander, and you may find some odd random thoughts scattered in it.

Anyhow, this book was so silly and unrealistic. Like any of this could happen. I really should look into getting that data entry position I saw in the job postings. Subliminal messaging through infancy and childhood also condition people to repeat idiotic platitudes as if they are genuine wisdom. I need to turn that frown upside down. I should go buy some new ones and throw the old ones out.

Should I get a new set of golf clubs? But would I play more if I got new clubs? The population even gets to zip around in their own private helicopters rather than cars. Man, when are they going to come out with jet packs for everyone. I want my jet pack! Casual sex is actively encouraged. These condom commercials on TV have gotten really racy. Writing is boring. Like a businessman could ever become that popular.

Is Steve Jobs making any announcements this week? While everyone seeks to be constantly entertained, all of the entertainment panders to the lowest common denominator. Hey, Jersey Shore is on!

Perhaps the most far fetched idea in this is that the population has been trained to sedate themselves with a drug called soma that relives any potential anxieties and keeps people from thinking about anything upsetting. I want a beer. I guess this Huxley guy might have gotten lucky and predicted a few things, but he was way off base about where society was going.

Feb 07, Madeline rated it it was amazing Shelves: the-list , science-fiction. Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in That's almost eighty years ago, but the book reads like it could have been written yesterday. I think I liked this one better than , the book traditionally considered to be this one's counterpart. Not really sure why this is, but it's probably because this one has a clearer outsider character the Savage who ca Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in Not really sure why this is, but it's probably because this one has a clearer outsider character the Savage who can view the world Huxley created through his separate perspective.

In this light, I will give the last word to Neil Postman, who discussed the differences between Orwell and Huxley's views of the future: "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in 'Brave New World revisited,' the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

In 'Brave New World' people are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. View all 37 comments. Wow, the anger over this rating!

My first post for this book was a quote and a gif of Dean from Supernatural rolling his eyes and passing out. And people were pissed. How dare I? So I will: This is still one of the most boring emotionless books I have ever read. It seemed like a natural choice after I loved Orwell and Atwood but, my god, Huxley is a dry, dull wri Wow, the anger over this rating!

It seemed like a natural choice after I loved Orwell and Atwood but, my god, Huxley is a dry, dull writer. Another reviewer called this book a "sleeping pill" and that is a fantastic description. After all the hullabaloo with my original post, I borrowed Brave New World from my local library with the intention of reading it again to give a more detailed review for those freaking out in the comments. And I returned it after suffering through only a few pages.

A few years later I got the ebook, thinking I would eventually make it through somehow. But I haven't. It's so mind-numbingly dull. I don't want to do it to myself. The Globalization of World Politics was more enjoyable than this book. Shelves: 5-star-reads , reviewed-for-fantasy-book-review , sci-fi.

I want sin. Sex is on tap, everybody should be happy. In this dystopia they are trained from birth to think and feel in a certain way, and, for whatever reason, should they ever deviate from their ordained path, they are fed drugs that induce happiness and serenity; thus, the populace is kept within their desired space, and persist with the tasks they were born to do. Very few of them even consider that this is wrong; this is all they have known.

And to make things even more maniacally clever, all physical and sexual needs are fulfilled completely as everybody belongs to everybody else in every sense with the ultimate goal of people never developing desire. All desire should be fulfilled, nobody wants for anything else. People are machines and houses are factories. They are mass produced and designed to be one thing and one thing only. All values are inverted. The idea of showing any emotion is horrific and repulsive.

Love is unknown and alien. Death is associated with sweetness and relief. Children are fed candy when they are thought about death, so they associate the two together, so when as adults they see death they think of treats rather than the loss of someone they have known and worked beside for years.

In Brave New World people are husks, empty and detached, without ever realising it. Like all effective dystopian societies, reading and information plays an exceedingly important role. As with Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit , all books have been destroyed and made inaccessible.

John, one of the few characters who was born away from the new world, stumbles across a volume of Shakespeare and it changes his life. He can only think and feel in Shakespearean language and begins to view the world through a semi-romantic lens and only finds depravity when he walks into the new world.

He has been termed the savage, though he knows and understands the real meaning of the term even if those who call him such do not. Naturally, he becomes depressed and isolated in this new space, a space that he cannot be a part of or accepted in not that he would want to be. And I found him by far the most interesting and compelling character within the story because he is the only one to really look beyond the boundaries of his own experience and to find it wanting.

View all 18 comments. Feb 29, Erin added it Shelves: ew-high-school-english. I know i'm going to get slammed for saying this later, especially because i never do actual reviews or completely delve into what i'm thinking so shoot me but haven't you ever been roaming the world wide inter-web and found a little troller you thought "well, this person is a poor use of a human brain? View all 56 comments. Published in The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF After Ford AD in the Gregorian calendar , where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination programmes into predetermined classes or castes based on intelligence and labor.

Lenina Crowne, a hatchery worker, is popular and sexually desirable, but Bernard Marx, a psychologist, is not. He is shorter in stature than the average member of his high caste, which gives him an inferiority complex. His work with sleep-learning allows him to understand, and disapprove of, his society's methods of keeping its citizens peaceful, which includes their constant consumption of a soothing, happiness-producing drug called Soma.

Courting disaster, Bernard is vocal and arrogant about his criticisms, and his boss contemplates exiling him to Iceland because of his nonconformity. His only friend is Helmholtz Watson, a gifted writer who finds it difficult to use his talents creatively in their pain-free society. View all 5 comments. Nov 13, Lyn rated it it was amazing. This set the stage about what a dystopian story should be or not be.

Sixteen years before Orwell's but eleven years after We by Yevgeny Zamyatin , this is a high water mark for the genre, many of its themes could be told today.

Truth be said, this could be published today and wou This set the stage about what a dystopian story should be or not be. Truth be said, this could be published today and would be just as good, it rises to the challenge and then towers above it.

Huxley does more than describe a bleak and cynical post-apocalyptic or dystopian world, he looks a dystopian resident in the eye and puts before him a mirror to flesh out what is real and unreal. Further, Huxley has turned that same mirror on the reader and we see in his far future fantasy a reality that could be today.

Huxley reveals that the seeds of Mustafa Mond and his ilk have fertile ground in our culture and in our souls. The world that has been crafted for the denizens of Huxley's nightmare landscape is explained fully and matter-of-factly by Mond. Huxley's sermon is delivered as stoically and deterministically as Jonathon Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God".

Huxley, perhaps more so than Orwell, has crafted a domain wherein the individual has succumbed to the will of the state. Most of all in this reading is the characterization of John and of his juxtaposition with him as a product of the savage reservation and of his alienation in the London of the brave new world.

In John, Huxley has created a shadow of Miranda from The Tempest, and the civilization he finds is one that he ultimately rejects in favor of the most extreme form of individual choice. Timeless and important.

View all 32 comments. Apr 17, Johannes rated it it was ok Shelves: literature. This book presents a futuristic dystopia of an unusual kind. Unlike in Orwell's , Huxley's dystopia is one in which everyone is happy. However, they are happy in only the most trivial sense: they lead lives of simple pleasures, but lives without science, art, philosophy or religion. In short, lives without deeper meaning. Although people are expected to work hard and efficiently during working hours, during off hours people live in an infantile way, never engaging their minds, and satisfying This book presents a futuristic dystopia of an unusual kind.

Although people are expected to work hard and efficiently during working hours, during off hours people live in an infantile way, never engaging their minds, and satisfying themselves with sex and drugs. The premise of the book I find quite interesting.

However, the execution is lacking. The characters are not particularly endearing, and indeed they are quite flat. Worse, Huxley fails to explain why this future of controlled contentment is wrong.

The reader will intuit that the this indeed a dystopia posing as a utopia, but Huxley's reliance on this feeling is a philosophical failure. It is the burden of the author to present us not with an account of something we know is bad, but to explain the source of the knowledge. Huxley attempts something akin to an explanation in the second-to-last chapter, a discussion between "the Savage" who grew up outside civilization and Mustalpha Mond, a World Controller.

During the conversation, Mond refers to philosopher Francis Bradley and credits him with the idea that philosophy is "the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. However, I find this deeply unsatisfying. Why write a book to tell people what they already know?

Moreover, a single reference to Bradley is not sufficient to convince me that this definition of philosophy is correct. If Huxley's novel relies heavily on this idea, he should have supported it with more than a solitary statement of Mond.

Indeed, Mond promptly refutes the statement by denying instinct as separate from conditioning, and as the civilized population of the world seems to be controlled largely by conditioning, it would seem that in Huxley's world, Mond is correct! In summary, Huxley crafts an interesting future world where people are blithely content without knowing passion or pain. Unfortunately, he fails both to craft an interesting story to set in this world and to write a strong philosophical argument why such a world would be harmful for mankind.

He relies on the obvious faults of the world and the intuitive reaction of the reader, and thus provides no deeper insights. As a social message, as a novel, and as a statement on the way in which mankind should behave, I find Brave New World inferior in almost every way to The one word of praise I will give to Huxley's novel is that his dystopia is more unusual and more intriguing than Orwell's.

If only he had dome something more with it. View all 31 comments. Brave New World is a young man's novel, written in the interwar years. Huxley was then living in a collapsing world: a world where the optimist 19th-century dreams of progress, of improved humanity, of a new and superior man, had been shattered in the trench warfare of World War I and were about to be burned amidst the horrors of the concentration camps.

Huxley seems to be sensing that grave danger is looming on the horizon, and he imagines a utopia where a single superstate is ruling the whole p Brave New World is a young man's novel, written in the interwar years. Huxley seems to be sensing that grave danger is looming on the horizon, and he imagines a utopia where a single superstate is ruling the whole planet.

Not all people get the best genetic formula, however: some of these manufactured humans are reduced to imbecility, perform the lowest functions, and are nonetheless content with their lot. Children, of course, are all brainwashed and conditioned with hypnotic techniques sleep teaching.

There are no families anymore, and sexual promiscuity is pervasive. Adults get a further supply of silly entertainment Feelies and drugs Soma that renders them docile, keeps them young, and make them love their voluntary servitude.

In short, humanity has achieved happiness and reached the End of History. The sexual revolution has indeed taken place — although full sexual libertarianism is still a pipe dream. Pharmacopoeia, narcotics, antidepressants, tranquillisers and rejuvenating treatments are broadly available; as well as irrelevant and mind-numbing 3D entertainment, peppered with commercial slogans. Genetic engineering and biotechnology are everywhere although not used to select humans as yet.

Brave New World is a novel structured around a set of rather crude characters and plots; there is, however, no clear protagonist. Huxley has a witty tongue-in-cheek sense of humour throughout. A type of humanity that might well be appealing to us right now, who knows… Brave New World is obviously a fascinating political statement that spoke to the European crisis of the s.

See also my review of Brave New World Revisited. All references to Shakespeare have been removed as well, although the romance is a central part of the show not so much in the book. View all 27 comments. As a teenager I went through a period of reading a vast number of distopian novels - probably all the teenage angst. This is the one that has continued to haunt me however, long after the my youthful cynicism has died it's death. However, there is something very rotten at the heart.

It's about how what we want isn't always what we should get. It looks at ho As a teenager I went through a period of reading a vast number of distopian novels - probably all the teenage angst. It looks at how state sponsered "happiness" can entirely miss the point. Perhaps, most importantly, it makes the case for individual freedom rather than authoritarian diktat.

It should be read hand in hand with Mill's Utilitarianism to get a good idea of the philosophy that inspired it. Incidentally, I gave this book to my boyfriend as a present for his 18th birthday a rather depressing gift I know. At the time he wasn't particularly freaked out by it and said that it didn't hold the same level of dread as say, or "The Handmaid's Tale".

As he's got older however, he's found the idea more and more frightening. Six years later it has more of a sting in the tail for him. I don't know why this should be but I'll hazard a guess that as you get older you're idea of "happiness" becomes perhaps more complex, making the ideal of "Brave New World" even more disturbing. View all 10 comments. Aug 05, Fergus rated it liked it. Brave New World says as much about Aldous Huxley as it does about our modern world.

Maybe more. When he wrote it, Huxley was in the process of losing his inner child. Darling of the Jet Set, he was the literary version of their current idol, Cole Porter. And worst of all, to his own deep, dreaming subconscious! Shy, lanky, shortsighted polymath Huxley was born to a family of Em Brave New World says as much about Aldous Huxley as it does about our modern world. Shy, lanky, shortsighted polymath Huxley was born to a family of Eminent Victorians, and was given ample leisure time to read any book he could get his hands on - which was them all.

They would call him a nerd nowadays. But his reading and shyness disassociated him from the rough-and-tumble world. He had no fixed anchor. Like so many of us, he had lost his centre of gravity, or had never had one. But entre-deux-guerres Europe loved him, and adopted him as one of its own. The darling of the Smart Young Things - as the Catholic Waugh tartly put it - he was witty, caustic and irreverent.

He could do no wrong - except in the eyes of social activists, on one side, and believers on the other. So it was at the midpoint of his career that he took up his pen against the future in Brave New World. Problem is, he half-loved his own Utopia. And in later life he moved to the U. When his beloved wife Maria died of cancer, disconsolate and without moorings, he turned to her much younger caregiver for love - a quality conspicuous by the rarity of its occurrence in his hyper-intellectual heart.

They were married at a no-frills marriage boutique in Nevada. They explored Eastern religions through Vedanta, then a current fad.

He was very much a faddish man without roots, and much akin in his casual though refined nature to the citizens of the Brave New World. And too much akin to us struggling souls in the too-fast-forward unforgiving world of But Carl Jung used to say that our Shadow will visit us in our dreams if we ignore it in our daily lives Huxley bought into the mainstream Freudian POV that the asceticism of the great mystics was mere dumb sexual repression witness his Late anti-Christian rant entitled The Devils of Loudon - now made newly available on Kindle.

And late in life, close to the time of his own death, Huxley dreamt he was floating in a vast orb containing a marvellous city. But outside the bubble, brutish crowds were howling with derisive laughter at him - yes, him - the untouchable visionary who penned the great Brave New World! A wannabe mystic, he was a no-show at the starting gate because he could never focus his thoughts long enough to shore up enough justifications for a undying Faith. He awoke from that dream in a panic.

Poor, dear lost soul that he was, there were times when even Soma wouldn't help And in his quest for new utopias, he had left the rough and tumble Faith of ordinary poor workaday, believing sods out of his equation. For his advanced calculations noisily and brusquely precluded the one possible healing panacea for his soul - the Simplicity of the Holy Spirit.

Ford and Freud… Machinery and sexuality… These cosmic signs rule the world… Consumers and conformists constitute an ideal society… Like aphides and ants, the leaf-green Gamma girls, the black Semi-Morons swarmed round the entrances, or stood in queues to take their places in the monorail tram-cars.

Mulberry-coloured Beta-Minuses came and went among the crowd. The roof of the main building was alive with the alighting and departure of helicopters.