Written by Aldous Huxley in 1932, this work was in the stamp of such great science fiction as H. G. Wells and before him Jules Verne.
Both Wells and Verne peaked the interest of readers by offering them ideas that were seemingly far in the future, giving them a taste (maybe) of utopia. Jules Verne placed his characters in a nuclear submarine a hundred years before the fact occurred; and then, over a hundred years earlier than humans actual reached the moon, he wrote about a trip there. Wells is probably best known for his War of the Worlds which evoked terror when Orson Wells re-created the story on the radio on Halloween night 1938. But he also gave us Descent Into the Middle of the Earth and The Time Machine.
Science Fiction
There have always been arguments whether these authors and others of their kind were interest in making predictions or just creating stories that would satisfy their readers. Ray Bradbury, a science fiction writer of today, maintains that he writes to please himself and he does not much care what his audience wants. This concept is certainly devoid of concern for the audience of the writer. Arthur C. Clarke, another contemporary science fiction writer, is more concerned with drawing pictures of the world he sees about him. A reader may be drawn to understand conclusions that are within his literature, but Clarke maintains that offering conclusions to readers is far from his purpose.
The majority of writers who are concerned with making a living and therefore giving the public what it wants are not to be considered in this brief glance at the purpose of authors. Those who are writing for the public might be said to be prostituting their skill while those who are writing to please themselves are certainly not involved with society in general. Those who are portraying what they see or are offering comments about what they see and those who are predicting what might come about are authors who have civilization and our position in it at heart.
Authors who are truly involved in their society are the ones who can portray what they see and are historians to those who may read their works long after they are gone. Huxley is such a writer. He portrayed what he saw as does Clarke, and he commented to induce society to change their habits.
Whether he took the idea for his most famous novel from Fritz Lange's Metropolis can be argued to either option. The basic premise of easily running society (easily running does not imply necessarily that all are pleasure-filled) is natural to humans at any age. Huxley could not have been unaware of the work. But one does not have to go into the past further than Wells and The Time Machine to recognize a similar society in the Morlocks and the Eloi although the working Morlocks are certainly in control of the relaxing Eloi. top
Huxley's Concerns
Huxley offered real advances that we can see today, advances that Huxley saw only twenty-five years after he wrote the novel. Genetic Engineering is found on the first page, and throughout we see examples of drugs, personal transportation, movies that are more, loss of freedom and a growing governmental control. Everything that Huxley envisioned is the direct result of technology; and with it, he feared the loss of what it meant to be human.
In the early 1960's he offered another view of humanity in the perennial battle against technology in a novel Island. He pitted the humanity of an island of primitive people against the technology of modern oil seekers.
Huxley in BNW is seriously concerned that humanity not lose its nature because of progress, nor gain the potential self-slavery to that progress. There is no doubt that we are given a picture of a society perfectly at ease, without problems, and satisfied with their station in life. But Huxley is asking us whether this is really humanity, whether this is a state we human beings should be striving for.
Education appears to be a thing of the past; menials created for the jobs do the dirty and foul labor that even today many are loath to do. Naturally the reader of the books will place himself in the position of one of the Alphas. But readers generally are not aware that not everyone will be an Alpha--not even all those who read now would be Alphas. Of course those doing menial tasks are pleased to do them, because they have been grown to do them and that is all they know--they think the Alphas have the hardest jobs. top
Morality
Pleasure is everywhere; it is the hallmark of BNW. Into the hedonistic society John the Savage, the viviparous son of a couple from BNW, is placed. His introduction to the society of London (Huxley was English) is used as blackmail by Bernard, but we are quick to see the contrast created by his outcast development on an Indian reservation and the stark existence of the people in BNW.
That contrast is created through the most moral and ethical demands John makes of the new society. His education, the Bible and Shakespeare, is not only opposed to everything he sees, but the whole society laughs at him for his beliefs. The reader is hard pressed not to ask himself why people cannot see that John is right, that he is so moral. It is this very concept that sets the reader for his first shock: Huxley was an atheist, he believed in no God; at death his existence was finished. How could such a person have placed so lofty goals in a character?
The reasoning is quite simple: because an atheist has no place to go, he must make this existence the best he can. The atheist will go to any length to follow the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you." But he transposes it some: "Do unto others so they will do unto you." Huxley saw in Brave New World not an existence he would like to join. Thus he was hoping that others would see the same faults and problems that would beset humanity and nature if we should move to such a technological society.
In a sense Brave New World is a frightening book for anyone who values freedom. In such an existence we would have no guarantee that we should fall into the "ruling" Alpha class, or even the slightly less able Betas. Naturally according to the engineering after birth, we should be happy in whatever class we were born into, but part of our happiness now is our ability to choose to strive for goals. There is none of that in BNW.
It takes only a little looking about to realize that one of the most basic elements of human nature is the need to dream and chase that dream. Without that trait we should be running around with our pet dog or looking for the next meal who knows where or hiding from some predator much larger than we are. Because this trait (and almost every other trait that makes human beings different from the rest of animals) is missing from the society of BNW, the novel presents the most frightening circumstances for readers who think. This is one of the reasons Brave New World was banned from high school campuses in the 1950's and 1960's. Parents did not want their children subjected to the fear of what not being human might lead to. As great literature, compared to Shakespeare or Plato or the philosophers in general or novelists like Tolstoy, Dostoevski and Twain, Brave New World is not epic. Its words and sentences are not of the titanic category; but its ideas are with the greats of all time. top