Today,
another guest review, by Chris King:
I am back
to review more classics from the terrible world of the past where there was no
such thing as feminism, penicillin, the internet or an independent Canada.
Ah, the
modern world! Currently we all strive to have a place in the world. The
previous generation cajoles the members of the younger one to get jobs, find
their place in society and fulfil their role. However, with unemployment being
countered with more low-hour and zero-contract jobs, there is still a lot of
time for people to think about how little their contribution is needed, as they
struggle to find their temporary place in the world. Huxley’s Brave New World solves this problem –
but every utopia has its horrible side, the part of humanity that is sacrificed
to create what is, if not a perfect world, then at least a well-run one where
everyone has their place.
Written in
1931, Brave New World portrays an
ordered world of individual happiness at the expense of people’s humanity.
Huxley has very biting wit regarding human history and endeavour. He once
remarked that after each major war a generation was scarred, and that we might
‘look forward to a period, not indeed of peace, but of limited and only
partially ruinous warfare’; he remarked that the old style totalitarianism of
mass imprisonment and killings was going out because it was inefficient, and
that the new style totalitarianism would have slaves who love their servitude
and write the propaganda that they read to each other. In this book Huxley has
created his perfect, terrible, utopia, years before Nineteen-Eighty Four.