Customer Reviews

Brave New World (Barron's Book Notes)

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4 star:		(1)
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I read a review someone gave of this book that said Brave New World is "boring" and "absurdly weak." The review stated that "the general portrait of the future is very brief and full of lacunes, [and] one of the characters spent the entire book just quoting Shakespeare." I disagree strongly with this view. I did not find this book to be at all boring; in fact, I thought it was extremely well composed and amazingly detailed in its view of a dystopian future. The above mentioned reviewer's statement that The Savage quotes Shakespeare too much is absurd. Huxley cleverly uses Shakespeare's writing to show the distinct difference between our society today (or how it was in the 1930's, rather) and this anti-utopia that he has created. Shakespeare is known as the greatest writer of all time in the English language for a reason: he wrote about the nature and lives of people in such a way that we can all relate to it. Shakespeare so gracefully characterized human nature; the point that Huxley is trying to make with Shakespeare is that this "Brave New World" has been so dehumanized that they can no longer even relate to basic universal truths such as love, jealousy and unhappiness. It is an extremely powerful way of making his point about his dystopian society. While Huxley's character development is not his strong point, the picture that he paints of a future society is frightening. Ignore the reviewer I referred to. Read this book.

The strength of the novel is in its focus on the basic characteristics of humanity, it offers to the reader a glimpse at the future but more than that, it offers a very intricate look at humanity and what it means to be human. In an age of of corrective surgery and self help books, A Brave New World lets us see the flip side to this, we can reach an understanding through Huxley's writing that the everyday complaints about appearance, pain and attitude are exactly the beautiful things that make one "truly" human. He is a genius and it is through his writing that we can avoid such a superficial downfall. We are the savages behind the cage, but it is the words of Faulkner that come to mind mankind will not merely endure, we shall prevail.

Creating a depiction of what the future can hold is a task that Aldous Huxley tackled in his 1932 published book, Brave New World. It tells the story of two main characters, Bernard Marx and John ?the Savage.? The rebellious Marx is filled with an inner hatred towards the Utopian society. John is an outsider with many dissimilar views on Utopia. Both live in a controlled world that divides humans into a caste system. The story begins 632 years after the brave new world (Utopia) has existed. Babies are born in test tubes, a person?s future is determined before birth, the state police control the people?s freedom, Soma is a substance that prevents the people from opening their mind, and the new world is ruled by dictators called World Controllers. Huxley enlightens the reader with a curiosity for the new world but does not give Marx or John the influence to change Utopia into democracy (or sanity). Marx is merely a thinker; he does not show any action towards his belief on society. I believe the intensity of the climax would be greater if Marx took initiative with John to spread the word of freedom and democracy. Although John tries to teach society of open-mindedness, he fails and ends up being in the hands of the people. The novel would serve a better purpose in change than in persistence.
With the climax not being fulfilled to my expectations, Huxley does create a forecast when writing about the topic of overpopulation. This is only one example in the novel where Huxley is picked out as a predictor and makes me speculate where our society could be headed. In the 1930?s economists were afraid that the population of life on earth was outgrowing the availability of natural resources (Paul, Warren. Brave New World-Cliff Notes). Huxley foretold this bold statement. In his novel, the depiction of the state police keeping track of how many infants were born and the plan of social role before birth, was comparable to the problem raised in the 1930?s. Issues like overpopulation and human restrictions add great curiosity to the story, making Huxley brilliant at his work. He leaves you wondering what this world may come to if our freedom is ruled by a higher dictatorship. I recommend this novel to anyone seeking a possible outlook on the future of our society.

Huxley's classic Brave New World is a study in happiness. He starts with the concept of making everyone happy and then shows us that there is always unhappiness in humanity no matter what we try to do to abolish it. In eliminating all of the things that cause us pain, this society also eliminates all that could cause joy. Stripped of all emotion, they are left with a sensual world. This novel is not a prediction. It is a study of human nature. "To err is human." Therefore, we must accept our nightmares if we want to have dreams. There is no such thing as a human utopia.

The purpose of this book was to inform us on how life would be like if we became chemically and emotionally dependent on material values. Brave New World is Huxley's opinion of how the world would be like if everything was perfect and conflict never arose. This is a wonderful and interesting piece of work, a true masterpiece of literature.

Over the past ten years, I have picked up and promptly put back down this book many times. This past weekend, I fought against the very grain of my being and finished it in one sitting. I am happy to say that it does pick up a bit after the first mechanical one third of the book. Unfortunately, not much. It is flippant and silly in its presumptions of human behaviour. It is about as subtle as an orange reflective safety vest, and as well written as a Dragonlance novel. I will be re-reading 1984 and trying to forget that I had ever bothered with such a tepid, childish book. END

Brave Aldous Huxley's Book! I have read it 18 years ago (I was a teenager, 12 years!). I am reading it again and I can not stop. I am from Brazil, a third world country, but I can see the same phenomenas you found in Brave New World..

i did not find the BNW review to be helpful in my study of the novel. It was lackluster in details and proved to be no assistance. I do not recommend wasting precious dollars on such inflamatory work.

Huxley offers a disturbing view of the future with Brave New World. I read this book for the first time many years ago and have never forgotten it. It's a story that stays with you forever if you get anything out of it at all. :)

If you are the type of person that watches Disney movies frame-by-frame in search of sexual undertones, then do not pick up this book because you will be offended by the constant sex. But, if you enjoy fine literature, then I would definitely recommend this novel. It's ideas about culture are very intriguing. Read this book.