Anne's Reviews > Brave New World
Brave New World
by
by
I think I read it wrong.
Because my first thought upon finishing this was this:
Where the hell do I sign up for this Brave New World?
Basically, this society is missing religion, shame, sin, misery, fear, disease, and classic books.
Now, that's not to say life is perfect in this utopia.
Nobody gets married and has kids anymore. I know, a lot of you are thinking that isn't quite the downside that the book thinks it is. No more monogamy? Gasp. Whatever would we do?
The new people are grown in test tubes. There are the dumb ones who do the menial shit, the average ones who do the office stuff, and the smarter ones who run the show. After being conditioned genetically, everyone is raised in state-run lab/home/school facilities, brainwashed in their sleep, and given a teeny bit of shock therapy in the toddler years to ensure that folks are content with their lot in life.
Can you imagine if people were actually set up to be in charge by nothing more than a coincidence of birth?
Gosh. That's some crazy sci-fi caste shenanigans right there.
So what we have here is job security, free drugs that don't have side effects and make you feel good, non-judgemental sex, no conflict, no health issues till you die, and no barky religious folks knocking on your door at 9 am on a Saturday.
And what are you missing out on, pray tell? Shakespeare.
I've read his stuff, and I can say without a doubt that I could skip it and make do with a Micheal Bay movie. Fair warning, no one has ever accused me of being someone they aspire to emulate.
Even the evil overlord in charge of it all wasn't that bad of a dude. When these guys met him and confronted him with their doubts as to how well they actually enjoyed their place in society, he just sent them to an island full of like-minded individuals so they could do what they wanted without disrupting the flow of things. He was kind of like, yeah, this isn't for everyone and sent them off with a wave of his chill hand.
For the entire book, I kept waiting for the Soylent Green is People moment, but it never really came. To me, that world did not appear worse than ours in any significant way. The only weird thing was that being a mother or father was shameful and no one was monogamous. That's not exactly the most horrifying thing I've ever heard happening in a dystopian novel.
Especially if the other option is to be like John, who flogged himself every time he got a boner over cute little Lenina. On a related note, the part where he kept yelling STRUMPET! STRUMPET! STRUUUUMPET! had me laughing until the tears rolled down my face. I kept waiting for some sort of redemption arc for this savage wherein he stopped being a complete asshat, but that also didn't happen. He was creepy as fuck right up till the end.
And what an ending it was.
(view spoiler)
If you drew random scenarios out of a hat and put them down on paper in no particular order, you seriously could not have come up with a more bananas conclusion to this book.
I'm still not sure what the moral of the story is here. Now, admittedly, I like the sound of the drugs and sex and fun holidays. I will say I think it was a bit of overkill to taze babies.
Then again, sacrifices must be made for the greater good.
I'm kidding! Don't zap toddlers, you idiot.
Ok. At the end of the day, I didn't really care for this book. I personally thought it was sort of boring. Not much happened plotwise and I never really felt invested in any of the characters. It seemed (to me) a bit of a daffy book that had a lot of fuckwit ideas of what would happen if we ignore the strict moral codes about sex found in most religions.
I know this is a beloved novel and I don't think you're stupid if you enjoyed it. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
Michael York was the narrator of the audiobook I listened to, and I thought he did a fantastic job.
Because my first thought upon finishing this was this:
Where the hell do I sign up for this Brave New World?
Basically, this society is missing religion, shame, sin, misery, fear, disease, and classic books.
Now, that's not to say life is perfect in this utopia.
Nobody gets married and has kids anymore. I know, a lot of you are thinking that isn't quite the downside that the book thinks it is. No more monogamy? Gasp. Whatever would we do?
The new people are grown in test tubes. There are the dumb ones who do the menial shit, the average ones who do the office stuff, and the smarter ones who run the show. After being conditioned genetically, everyone is raised in state-run lab/home/school facilities, brainwashed in their sleep, and given a teeny bit of shock therapy in the toddler years to ensure that folks are content with their lot in life.
Can you imagine if people were actually set up to be in charge by nothing more than a coincidence of birth?
Gosh. That's some crazy sci-fi caste shenanigans right there.
So what we have here is job security, free drugs that don't have side effects and make you feel good, non-judgemental sex, no conflict, no health issues till you die, and no barky religious folks knocking on your door at 9 am on a Saturday.
And what are you missing out on, pray tell? Shakespeare.
I've read his stuff, and I can say without a doubt that I could skip it and make do with a Micheal Bay movie. Fair warning, no one has ever accused me of being someone they aspire to emulate.
Even the evil overlord in charge of it all wasn't that bad of a dude. When these guys met him and confronted him with their doubts as to how well they actually enjoyed their place in society, he just sent them to an island full of like-minded individuals so they could do what they wanted without disrupting the flow of things. He was kind of like, yeah, this isn't for everyone and sent them off with a wave of his chill hand.
For the entire book, I kept waiting for the Soylent Green is People moment, but it never really came. To me, that world did not appear worse than ours in any significant way. The only weird thing was that being a mother or father was shameful and no one was monogamous. That's not exactly the most horrifying thing I've ever heard happening in a dystopian novel.
Especially if the other option is to be like John, who flogged himself every time he got a boner over cute little Lenina. On a related note, the part where he kept yelling STRUMPET! STRUMPET! STRUUUUMPET! had me laughing until the tears rolled down my face. I kept waiting for some sort of redemption arc for this savage wherein he stopped being a complete asshat, but that also didn't happen. He was creepy as fuck right up till the end.
And what an ending it was.
(view spoiler)
If you drew random scenarios out of a hat and put them down on paper in no particular order, you seriously could not have come up with a more bananas conclusion to this book.
I'm still not sure what the moral of the story is here. Now, admittedly, I like the sound of the drugs and sex and fun holidays. I will say I think it was a bit of overkill to taze babies.
Then again, sacrifices must be made for the greater good.
I'm kidding! Don't zap toddlers, you idiot.
Ok. At the end of the day, I didn't really care for this book. I personally thought it was sort of boring. Not much happened plotwise and I never really felt invested in any of the characters. It seemed (to me) a bit of a daffy book that had a lot of fuckwit ideas of what would happen if we ignore the strict moral codes about sex found in most religions.
I know this is a beloved novel and I don't think you're stupid if you enjoyed it. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
Michael York was the narrator of the audiobook I listened to, and I thought he did a fantastic job.
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Reading Progress
August 13, 2011
– Shelved
May 16, 2021
–
Started Reading
June 1, 2021
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-50 of 129 (129 new)
Ah, it's always so fun when values dissonance rears its head!
NO! Go for it. I'd love to see what your re-read would bring, Cathy. lol
I'm not sorry I read it, Mark. If this is a bucket list book, I still say it's a good idea to crack it open. For me, 1984 was more about state propaganda, media manipulation, and loss of independent thought. It took those ideas and went to crazy town, but even 1984 wasn't as nuts as BNW.
Yeah, I have the feeling that a woman willinginly having sex with men because they liked it and wanted to do it, would have been a big deal when this was written. I get the feeling that John was supposed to be the 'normal' one that I was supposed to have related to. lmfao
It was bananas. Probably because I was expecting it to be more about science and less about sex.
I think it got by because it was basically saying sex was a terrible thing outside of marriage. STRUMPET!!!
Thanks, Rob!
Ummm...I think it may be too late for our generation. But we can teach our children to eschew freedom and embrace
A gilded cage remains a cage.
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world. Where none suffered. Where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.
Or in the words of someone deeply influenced by Mr. Huxley...
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
——————
I applaud the idea behind the book, but I’m with you, Anne, on the confusing execution. Is there a story in there somewhere?
I am completely on your side in the epic struggle between Shakespeare and Bay for our limited attention. Can you imagine the Bard watching Transformers? After his 16th century mind recovered from watching
Your honesty and humour are to be emulated.
Great review. I laughed more than once. And I have a better perspective on tasing babies. :)
I thought it was pretty cool at the time. We are talking late 80s or so. It‘s been a while.
I thought it was pretty cool at the time. We are talking late 80s or so. It‘s been a while."
There were a lot of things I read back in the day that I should probably give a re-read now. But I won't. lol
Which narrator did you have?
Great review. I laughed more than once. And I have a better perspective on tasing babies. :)"
No tazing babies is really the takeaway from this book, I think.
Shakespeare and Michael Bay would probably be complete bros, you know? I think William would have totally had explosions AND running in slo-mo in his plays if he could have pulled it off. lmao
I agree that a cage is a cage. I'm just hoping my cage has air conditioning.
I Googled “Is tasing babies legal?”
Very confusing. I think cops are allowed to tase children. And if it’s good enough for a law enforcement officer, then surely it’s good enough for a parent who knows the true horror of said child/baby.
I also saw an article that claimed tasing can make people urinate/defecate. Possible application for potty training? Or to get a couple extra hours of sleep at night by inducing a poopy diaper just before lights out?
Shakespeare and Michael Bay would probably be complete bros, you know? I think William would have totally had explosions AND running in slo-mo in his plays if he could have pulled it off. lmao
A couple of mugs of mead and some shop talk...bam! Bruhs for life.
Bay could help Shakespeare with his dialogue replacing words like “aught” and “doth” and “yonder” with “classified” and “visual” and “cowboy”. Shakespeare, in turn, could help Bay explore female sexuality from a male perspective, violence with little or no purpose and horse cart chases.
I agree that a cage is a cage. I'm just hoping my cage has air conditioning.
Every amenity your heart (and body) could want. 70 F and 10% humidity and a hint of jasmine on a light breeze created by bare-chested Chris Hemsworth clones fanning you. A 60” OLED playing Bay’s greatest hits in a non-stop loop. This is no District 12.
Cross that velvet rope...middle finger raised high in salute to the rest of us wanting to get in. :)
You're not misremembering it. It's like any dystopian in that it takes one thing (in this case monogamy & family) and runs with the question what would happen if we forcibly removed sexual morality to the end of a crazy conclusion. The drugs make people content to not have anything 'real'. To me, these books are always missing the grey area or the happy medium. You don't need for everyone to prescribe to monogamy and family, and you don't need to remove it, either. Same with the drugs. If you want to have a drink or a puff to wind down at the end of the day, it's different than eating whatever you can get your hands on to cope with reality. There's always a happy medium that I think dystopian novels purposely avoid. And that's fine! It's a cool genre because of the way the authors go nuts.
Cross that velvet rope...middle finger raised high in salute to the rest of us wanting to get in. :)
"
How did you get that picture of me?
Dystopian or utopian?
Huxley was a few decades early to the "free love" counter-culture festival of the 60s. I'd like to say that my physical existence was a byproduct of that party, but my parents were both devout monogamists. (My mother thought Huxley was Satan incarnate which was all the encouragement I needed to read this. Thank you, mother. Or maybe not.)
Er...
No offense intended. That was one of the first gifs when Googling "velvet rope access". I was familiar with the episode from which it was taken. Funny, funny.
Did you know Grant Morrison adapted this as a TV show on Peacock+? I have not watched it because I'm not paying for Peacock.
https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/peac...
NBC/Universal needs to think about re-branding.
I would never pay for anything called “Peacock.” Sounds like a niche Tinder service
Now, if they called it something cool like...”PeacockMAX”...which sounds so much better...completely different story. Let me in that cage.
Entertain me!
I have never quite figured out who arbitrates “classics” and by what definition (unless it is simply the passing of time).
11th grade and I wanted to do my book report on Fellowship of the Ring.
“Not a classic” sneered my teacher.
But As I Lay Dying is? Hawthorne vs Tolkien? Sorry, no contest. Either thematically or linguistically.
Now, my son tells me that Tolkien is acceptable for high school English/literature classes. I guess because...post-movie adaptations...the books are now viewed as sufficiently boring to be eligible for the coveted classification.
I didn’t read Brave New World in high school because of assignment. Mainly because my mother hated it. And, at the time, when such things mattered and had no real merit, telling my peers that I had read it made me cooler than telling them that I had read Watchmen.
And I am much older...you young Generation Y cutie.
I was such an asshole when it came to classics, that I pretty much avoided reading them and just did the assignments using my own thoughts on some snippet of what I skimmed. And as you can see, my bucket list of the shit I avoided is catching up to me now.
Greatest generation. Ever. *wink*
We made Madonna who she is. And we... *scratching head* Never mind. Greatest generation ever. Represent!
I think Chad qualifies as Generation Y though. Or he may be right in the middle and get to choose. Be with us, Chad. “X” is cool. “Y” could just as easily be “Y not”.
Most of us were a-holes with regards to classics. That’s why Cliffs Notes had such a thriving business. Because very few actually read that stuff. Not when there was Tiger Beat magazine to peruse.
Also, why Al Gore eventually invented the internet (after reassuring Tipper that it could never be used to disseminate porn)...so we could get online synopses of the crap old people were making us read (and porn).
I bought almost $200 (1988 dollars) in paperback classics for a college colloquium and when I sold them back for about $30 two semesters later, the covers had not even been bent (I needed the $30). Over the next 30 years, I paid another *mumble mumble* amount to buy them again and actually read them.
In high school, I had little choice. You will see my life pattern. Two syllables. “Moth-er.” Hence, As I Lay Dying, which holds a 3.72 rating here on Goodreads. My perception of the book, from a forced reading in my youth, is very different.
I found Huxley absurd, but intoxicating. This was no Elfstones of Shannara or Pawn of Prophecy or Riddlemaster of Hed, but it felt very, very taboo.
I'm older than Anne. I'm smack dab in the middle of Gen X.
NBC/Universal needs to think about re-branding.
I would never pay for anything called “Peacock.” Sounds like a niche Tinder service
Now, if they..." LOL. So I’m thinking Peacock is a dating app for bird watchers. I’m a little afraid of what PeacockMAX would involve...people who like to actually dress up as peacocks and interact?
I did my math wrong. Sorry. I meant no disrespect.
(You know how
I’m right there in the middle with you. Class of ‘87. Born a couple of weeks after Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon. I remember every commercial nuclear power plant disaster (although TMI vaguely). And sadly, I lived to see school drills change from hiding under your desk to keep safe from the nuclear detonation in my era to locking yourself in a classroom to avoid an active shooter in my sons’ era. :( I’m ready for the Brave New World.
Peacocks are insufferable. They do not walk. They strut. The continuous preening. Grrrrr. And then when the male expands all the tail feathers...Bird can barely fly. All show.
Maybe it’s people emulating peacocks instead of dressing like them?
And yes, on second thought, PeacockMAX scares me a lot.
That's called Peecock.
Ha! Right? I was a bit confused on that part. Like, this was what would be encouraged? How is that helpful in any way?
I, too, found it annoying how suffering is equated with truth in the book, as if pleasure and happiness are always a lie. As you mentioned, it probably connects back to the religious basis, where people are supposed to feel guilty all the time for wanting to seek any type of enjoyment.
Thank you! I keep telling my husband that I'm funny but... lol
This would be bad if it happened but it is kinda funny since if anything it’s the opposite according to society IRL.