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hfjarmer 's review for:
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
dark
funny
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
#
*Brave New World* depicts a dystopian society where the breeding and raising of human beings is reduced to an exact "science." Through a combination of gestational bottles and sleep conditioning, each person's caste is predetermined by the conditioning - a tale of nature vs nurture. Lower caste members, for example, are bred to be smaller and less intelligent, supposedly to perform the more menial tasks required to "keep society afloat" without raising any objections. Everyone is conditioned to fulfill a specific role in society, from gardener and trash collector to psychologist and physicist.
Another key pillar of this society is the belief that "everyone belongs to everyone else." Every member is encouraged to act on their most basic instincts, behaving in an "infantile" manner. Eat what you want, play what you want, sleep with whom you want. There is no monogamy, no individualism. The society thrives on capitalism and conditioning everyone to desire nothing more than sex, drugs, and consumerism. This dystopian world is both fascinating and disturbing. Children are encouraged to engage in sexual play with one another, while intellectualism is discouraged in favor of blind consumerism.
All that being said, I rated it 3 stars purely based on my enjoyment level of the book rather than its importance or social commentary. While I believe I understood the book fairly well (though I am certainly no literary critic), it simply wasn’t a novel I particularly enjoyed. The absurdity of it all gripped me at the beginning and made me eager to learn more about their world, but I gradually began to drift off and lose interest. At first I was intrigued to see how Bernard and Lenina’s stories played out, but I felt the book lost steam after they visited the Native reservation. There are very obvious themes of misogyny and racism in this book, among other things, so reader beware, I suppose. This book is definitely worth reading if you enjoy dystopian novels that draw eerie parallels to modern society, and I’d recommend it to others despite my personal mid-level enjoyment.
*Brave New World* depicts a dystopian society where the breeding and raising of human beings is reduced to an exact "science." Through a combination of gestational bottles and sleep conditioning, each person's caste is predetermined by the conditioning - a tale of nature vs nurture. Lower caste members, for example, are bred to be smaller and less intelligent, supposedly to perform the more menial tasks required to "keep society afloat" without raising any objections. Everyone is conditioned to fulfill a specific role in society, from gardener and trash collector to psychologist and physicist.
Another key pillar of this society is the belief that "everyone belongs to everyone else." Every member is encouraged to act on their most basic instincts, behaving in an "infantile" manner. Eat what you want, play what you want, sleep with whom you want. There is no monogamy, no individualism. The society thrives on capitalism and conditioning everyone to desire nothing more than sex, drugs, and consumerism. This dystopian world is both fascinating and disturbing. Children are encouraged to engage in sexual play with one another, while intellectualism is discouraged in favor of blind consumerism.
All that being said, I rated it 3 stars purely based on my enjoyment level of the book rather than its importance or social commentary. While I believe I understood the book fairly well (though I am certainly no literary critic), it simply wasn’t a novel I particularly enjoyed. The absurdity of it all gripped me at the beginning and made me eager to learn more about their world, but I gradually began to drift off and lose interest. At first I was intrigued to see how Bernard and Lenina’s stories played out, but I felt the book lost steam after they visited the Native reservation. There are very obvious themes of misogyny and racism in this book, among other things, so reader beware, I suppose. This book is definitely worth reading if you enjoy dystopian novels that draw eerie parallels to modern society, and I’d recommend it to others despite my personal mid-level enjoyment.