Book Review: Brave New World

 

Book Review: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 

Goodreads Description: Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London in the year AD 2540 (632 A.F.—"After Ford"—in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that combine profoundly to change society.

My Review: Brave New World is a difficult classic to get invested in. Huxley had a point to make with this book, but he largely expresses that through worldbuilding rather than narrative. The dystopia he presents is indeed fascinating -- governments controlling people through pleasurable distractions rather than pain -- but it's coupled with next to no plot, unlikable characters, dry, colourless writing, and awkward pacing, which makes it a difficult swallow for modern readers. Brave New World is a quintessential dystopia through its soul crushing ending, but its lack of plot and character depth also robs that ending of some of its power. Instead of seeing how these characters struggled against the system and lost, we see them tour their world before ultimately submitting to it. I'm sure others feel differently, but I felt that many other classic dystopias do a better job at emotionally engaging the reader with the characters' struggle.

Now, the worldbuilding in this book is indeed fantastic. Huxley's ideas around governments conditioning behaviour and controlling people through pleasure was truly ahead of his time. It would be another 30 years before theorists like Michel Foucault began echoing these sentiments during their research on governmental and systematic power. Huxley's vision of this control is absolute, beginning with psychological and biological conditioning before birth, and continuing through pleasurable distractions like drugs (Soma) and sex (orgies). Huxley also questions the concept of civilized society, contrasting his "utopian" future against a racist caricature of Indigenous "tribal" life. Huxley posits that for all society's advancements, our moral regression has left us less civilized than the "savage" societies we purport to be superior to. While Huxley makes some interesting points about what is "savage" and "civilized," he singles out polyamorous sexual behaviour as the ultimate moral failing of modern society, which feels pretty dated. 

If you're just getting into classic dystopias, I don't recommend starting with Brave New World. It is worth the read, but more for the concepts it introduces rather than the story it's trying to tell. 

TL;DR: 3/5 stars. A fascinating world with a mediocre narrative.