Monday 20 June 2016

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley



If you like novels about dystopian futures, then alongside George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four this is one you must read. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is cynical, engaging and thoroughly interesting, set in a world where Henry Ford is revered as a messiah.

                Placed about six-hundred years in the future, the story begins in a human cloning facility where the director of the facility explains how the entire world’s population is test-tube grown, physically engineered and psychologically conditioned for fulfilling set, designated roles in this future society. There are no natural births anymore; humans are grown from eggs in test tubes and genetically altered to make them suitable for one of five castes: with super-intelligent, mentally unique and creative Alphas at the top, down to the vast hordes of drone-like, intellectually-stunted Epsilons at the bottom. The best and most knowledge demanding jobs are reserved for the higher castes, whilst low-skilled work which requires mindless drudgery is given to the lower castes. Each of these five groups are conditioned from birth to enjoy the kind of work they are predestined to perform, to make them compliant to this new world order, and are guaranteed any amount of physical or mental pleasure that they could ever want or need so that any thought of rebellion or unorthodoxy would never have a chance of occurring to them. There is no natural reproduction in this world, no conflicts, no disease, no loneliness, no social unrest. The only things wrong are the occasional Alpha caste member who feels a bit out of sorts with the world; as though they don’t quite fit in.

                On the fringes of this future society are areas not considered worthwhile by the powers-that-be; vast reservations inhabited by a vastly more primitive society, named savages by the rest of the human population. These ‘savages’ still worship gods, still repair their own clothes and items, still read the works of Shakespeare and, horrifyingly, still engage in sexual reproduction. Unlike the highly regulated, clone based society of the rest of the world, these ‘savages’ have families, still have mothers and fathers – both terms being obscene in this dystopia – and still believe in monogamy and love. When Bernard Marx, an isolated member of the Alpha caste working in the cloning facility, takes a trip to this reservation with a girl called Lenina, he stumbles upon a ‘savage’ named John who can speak his language. It transpires that John is actually the accidental biological son of Bernard’s boss, raised amongst the ‘savages’ on the works of Shakespeare. Bernard realises how much of a bombshell he could drop by bringing John back to his civilisation, and so does just that – guides him back home, reveals him to the world, and shows him just how far human society has progressed in six centuries. John is at first impressed, but it soon becomes apparent to him how ghastly, immoral and soulless the whole thing is.

                The setting itself is vividly laid out, and the story told by the book is purely in service of showing us this dystopian future. No one would want to read a story about how a man shows a stranger around their home city. Rather, what we want to read about is this weird new future in which everybody is cloned and conditioned into servitude, and how much has been lost in aid of this ultimate goal. To this extent then we can be unsurprised that the characters are not especially the best. They perform functions in the story of the world, and little more. The best character is the Resident World Controller for Western Europe, Mustafa Mond, for besides his cool name he fully understands how things have to be nowadays, and his knowledge of how life used to be makes him strangely enough one of the most relatable characters in the novel. Yet his character is still a result of his function, and his function in this story is to offer a couple of chapters of exposition towards the end of the novel about why the world is as it is, and why it must not be allowed to change. In many ways he could be considered the villain of the narrative, but he’s not at all villainous and in fact is just too nice a chap to warrant such a title. 

In the end the other characters: Bernard Marx the sceptic, the ‘Savage’ John, John’s drud-addled mother Linda - a woman who wants desperately to get back to her dystopian civilisation - and the ‘love-interest’ Lenina, all of them are there to perform mere narrative roles or delivery of exposition. Lenina for instance is largely in the narrative to show what life is like as a female, or to give something for the other characters, especially Bernard and John, something to bounce off. She performs her role within the story very well, but there was never anything more to her than that, which is a bit of a shame. I wonder if any of these characters could exist on their own merits, or whether we should just focus on the fact that this book nothing more than the presentation of an idea, of a vision of the future.

                Other than that, the novel is fortunately short enough not to wear out its welcome. The narrative, such as it is, is well structured and progresses at a relatively nice pace. If you’re aware of what sort of book you’re reading then it should not at any point become burdensome to read, and the early-20th century writing style is quite easy to get your teeth into. Nothing too dry, nothing too difficult. The sci-fi jargon that is unfortunately a necessity is worked into the text well enough to not be upsetting to the reader - and, as we all know, it's easy to go wrong with sci-fi jargon.

                One additional point to the writing style. In chapter three I discovered a fairly novel way that Huxley could write, one that I’ve never seen successfully replicated. In this section there are at least three scenes occurring at one time, with different dialogues between the characters, and rather than present each scene as one long series of paragraphs one after the other, the writer blends them up. A sentence or line of dialogue from one person in one location, followed by a line or sentence from another, and then another, for pages at a time. During this period of the narrative, when Bernard Marx, Assistant Predesinator, is squaring off against two of his [physically larger] colleagues in the male dressing room, Mustafa Mond is explaining history to a group of students outside whilst Lenina and her friend Fanny are in the female dressing room discussing Bernard Marx’s attractiveness. The paragraphs get shorter and shorter until they consist of just one or two sentences from each location. It looks rather like this:
              Bernard hated them, hated them. But they were two, they were large, they were strong.

                ‘The Nine Years War began in A.F. 141.’

                Not even if it were true about the alcohol in his blood-surrogate.’

                ‘Phosgene, chloropicrin, ethyl iodoacetate, diphenylcyanarsine, trichlormethyl chloroformate, dichlorethyl sulphide. Not to mention hydrocyanic acid.’

                ‘Which I simply don’t believe,’ Lenina concluded.

                ‘The noise of fourteen thousand aeroplanes advancing in open order. But in the Kurfurstendamm and the Eighth Arrondissement, the explosion of anthrax bombs is hardly louder than the popping of a paper bag.’

                ‘Because I do want to see a Savage Reservation.’

                ‘CH3C6H2(NO2)3 + Hg(CNO)2 = well, what? An enormous hole in the ground, a pile of masonry, some bits of flesh and mucus, a foot, with the boot still on it, flying through the air and landing, flop, in the middle of the geraniums – the scarlet ones; such a splendid show that summer!’

                ‘You’re hopeless, Lenina, I give you up.’

                ‘The Russian technique for infecting water supplies was particularly ingenious.’

                Back turned to back, Fanny and Lenina continued their changing in silence.
               
                ‘The Nine Years’ War, the great Economic Collapse. There was a choice between World Control and destruction. Between stability and…’

                ‘Fanny Crowne’s a nice girl too,’ said the Assistant Predestinator.

                In the nurseries, the Elementary Class Consciousness lesson was over, the voices were adapting future demand to future industrial supply. ‘I do love flying,’ they whispered, ‘I do love flying, I do love having new clothes, I do love…’ 
                                [Huxley, Brave New World, Pengin: 1955. pp. 48-49]
                Of course there is a much more gradual lead in to this scene which makes it less jarring, and if a style of writing were kept up like this for any greater length of time then the reader would soon be driven mad. Fortunately it only happens at one point in the story, at a significant time when we are fully introduced to most of our main characters, and this serves as a most memorable way of closing the first part of the story and opening the next. There is no attempt in the rest of the novel to be quite so avant-garde, but this moment is well placed and it does to a large extent work. Well done, Mister Huxley, for trying something original with writing and actually doing quite well with it.

                Now then, we must often see Brave New World compared alongside Nineteen Eighty-Four in terms of the great dystopian novels of the 20th century, so as I’ve now read both I can attempt an elementary comparison of my own. George Orwell’s future is one in which people are kept in their place through constant government monitoring, perpetual warfare against the only two other sovereign states in existence, worship of a dictator through his cult of personality, and never-ending shortages of food and consumer goods.  Aldous Huxley’s future world is one in which people are genetically bred for service in certain sectors of work, kept in their place by psychological conditioning and kept happy by all the sex, drugs and super-cinema they can get. George Orwell has his sceptical non-conformist protagonist imprisoned and tortured until he finally cracks. Aldous Huxley has his sceptical non-conformist protagonist shipped off to live the rest of his life in solitude on a peaceful island where he will ultimately be happier. 

So yes, ultimately Aldous Huxley’s dystopia is far less dystopian than George Orwell’s, and as such when one reads Brave New World one doesn’t really feel quite so depressed about it all. If you happen to be in the lower castes then you will have a comparatively terrible life, but you will have been genetically altered and psychologically conditioned to enjoy it. You would never aspire to anything else. It raises countless questions about morality and human nature, but we can appreciate this work of science fiction as if we were looking at some alien society, whose morals and values are merely different to our own. The ending did leave me a touch dissatisfied, and I would not say it was the most riveting read I’ve ever had, but it was certainly an interesting book, and I am glad to have experienced it.

Bibliotopia
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Middlesex: Penguin. (1955 [First published 1932]).

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