Thread: Brand New World - Adolus Huxley

What do you guys think about this book? We're reading it in my mass media class, and I just can't put this book down. It's supposed to be a 6 week book, and I'm halfway through it on my first week of having it.

I recommend those and "the Doors of Perception", by Adolus' neighbor Aldous.

Just read Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley and it was awesome, so this is one I'll haf to check out.

Yeah sorry, I wasn't paying attention to what I was typing. It is Brave New World.

@Caelum, it's an amazing novel.

I think I've expressed my views on it in an earlier thread.

It was good, but, having read it after 1984 I found it somewhat disappointing. Bernard was unlikeable. The ending was silly. John the Savage's journey was unfortunate.
It was just like a sillier take on the realistic darkness found in 1984.

...but then in the other thread I was told not to compare them, and that BNW is actually a fiendishly clever satire, of amazing foresight.

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Originally Posted by Tom88

It was just like a sillier take on the realistic darkness found in 1984.

But was written before 1984. Huxley actually taught Eric Blair (George Orwell) at Eton.

Originally Posted by Tom88

...but then in the other thread I was told not to compare them, and that BNW is actually a fiendishly clever satire, of amazing foresight.

As is 1984, but they satirise different things. BNW, for example, predicted cloning, the rise of Globalism and a world controlled by corporations. 1984 was a satire of Britain immediately after WW2, a grim, dirty place where the media was tightly controlled by government, was still under tight rationing and was effectively just a satellite of the US.

Both have the same premise; a socialist, totalitarian world. Only the methods of control differ. In 1984 it's fear, in BNW it's pleasure.

I find it kind of ironic that you were told not to compare the two, Tom88, because I was required to read both in one of my high school English classes. I doubt my teacher would've liked being told that he shouldn't ask us to compare the two novels, since we did so extensively.

Personally, I enjoyed both novels, although I found 1984 a bit more believable if trying to compare it to today's world . . . though the same could be said for pleasure.

Originally Posted by caellachgregor

I find it kind of ironic that you were told not to compare the two,

Likewise, as everyone else has been since 1948. Even Huxley compared them; he thought his own book was better.

I have Those Barren Leaves which I can't wait to jump into, once I finish this R. D. Wingfield novel I've been chipping away at.

Originally Posted by Featherpen

Love Brave New World. I have Island, but haven't read it yet. I think BNW and 1984, together, represent the most frightening dystopias the world could have. BNW is definately easier to relate to being an American, I think, because that is what our brand of dystopia is: corporations, pills, sex, consumerism, and thought-numbing pleasure.

I disagree. Stand On Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up are far more frightening than either, because they're actually happening. Bug Jack Barron and the Space Merchants are also very effective. A Clockwork Orange is also of that breed. All of them have a certain prophetic vision in common.