Welcome to the utopian Brave New World of Aldous Huxley! Word dystopian is also used which by Wikipedia means the “vision of a society that is the opposite of utopia.” This famous novel was written in 1931 has lost nothing in truthful description of any totalitarian regime nowadays or in the future. This novel is often paired with George Orwell’s 1984. I haven’t read 1984 but saw the movies 1984 (with the same name) and Brazil that were based on the books. The Aldous Huxley’s story is a twisted reality of some utopian everyday life in the year of 2540. In this fictious reality the most of the world is unified into a peaceful society of so called World State where people are born from glass-tubes. The human embryonic egg development is conditioned and people are divided into castes. The lowest ones have lower intelligence and growth and the highest one can fully develop. Everybody uses some drug called “soma” and recreational sex that sometimes changes into a mass orgy is an integral part of this society. But there are still some people who live in so called savage reservations where these rules don’t apply. Now John, one of those savages, accidentally gets into this World State society and the power of this book is that the reader experiences all John's adventures. I was surprised that after reading this book I couldn’t help comparing our society to this utopian (dystopian) one.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Brave New World
Welcome to the utopian Brave New World of Aldous Huxley! Word dystopian is also used which by Wikipedia means the “vision of a society that is the opposite of utopia.” This famous novel was written in 1931 has lost nothing in truthful description of any totalitarian regime nowadays or in the future. This novel is often paired with George Orwell’s 1984. I haven’t read 1984 but saw the movies 1984 (with the same name) and Brazil that were based on the books. The Aldous Huxley’s story is a twisted reality of some utopian everyday life in the year of 2540. In this fictious reality the most of the world is unified into a peaceful society of so called World State where people are born from glass-tubes. The human embryonic egg development is conditioned and people are divided into castes. The lowest ones have lower intelligence and growth and the highest one can fully develop. Everybody uses some drug called “soma” and recreational sex that sometimes changes into a mass orgy is an integral part of this society. But there are still some people who live in so called savage reservations where these rules don’t apply. Now John, one of those savages, accidentally gets into this World State society and the power of this book is that the reader experiences all John's adventures. I was surprised that after reading this book I couldn’t help comparing our society to this utopian (dystopian) one.
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