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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5129.Brave_New_World?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Brave New World" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517734m/5129.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5129.Brave_New_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Brave New World</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3487.Aldous_Huxley">Aldous Huxley</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16714138?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars Summary:
 Brave New World is set in a futuristic Utopian society. The people in this world are ensured contentment through an intricate combination of biological conditioning, years of brainwashing, free love, and a drug called soma that has no side effects. Families have been eliminated and children are conceived in peitre dishes and born in labratories. Here they are fed "words of wisdom" as they sleep. Phrases are repeated over and over during their developmental years so that they are ingrained in their brain. It is this way that people are convinced that they are completely happy with their class distinction, even if it is lower than others, and that the individual is nothing and society everything. They also learn not to fear death, and that permisquitity is much more fullfilling than love, which, along with the concept of families is ridiculed. All knowledge of God has been weeded out from societity.
 The system is not completely perfect, for it is still questioned at times by those who possess the intelligence to. Bernard Marx is one of these people. Despite all of the stimulated happiness around him he cannot find contentment, which he think lies with love he longs to find with a woman named Lenina. They take a trip to a Savage Reservation, a contained area where people are allowed to live however they want, unrestricted by the utopian society. Here they meet Linda, who was left there, lost, while years ago on a vacation with the Director. She has given birth, a henious thing in this society, to John, who is now a grown man. They bring the two back home where they are gawked and and made into dispicable celebrities. John is very unhappy in this "brave new world" where all semblance of beauty, art, and God have been locked away or destroyed. After Linda dies John speaks speaks with a high ranking officail who tries to convince him that the society is perfect and God is unnessesary. Soonafter, John runs away and lives in seclusion in a lifehouse. He is disgusted by this society and his participation in it, so he regularly whips himself as a form of penence. People continue to watch John or "the savage" as they call him, and copy his actions like it is a sort of game. The story ends with John hanging himself. 
 
 Worldveiw Connections:
 Through this book, Huxley asks the question where will technology leave us in the end. We see how, in the book, people have been manipulated by technology and live a sort of artificail existance. He also questions happiness and the basis for it. The people in the new world are convinced that they are content because they do not know any better. The savage voices Huxley's idea that there cannot be happiness without love and art, and with love comes pain. 
 
 Quotes:
 
 "Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desire and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions... Suggestions from the State."
 - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 2
 
 "Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. 'O brave new world!' Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. 'O brave new world!' It was a challenge, a command."
 - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 15
 
 "Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get."
 - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 16
 
 
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/955770?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Johanna's review
rating:

** spoiler alert ** Summary:
Brave New World is set in a futuristic Utopian society. The people in this world are ensured contentment through an intricate combination of biological conditioning, years of brainwashing, free love, and a drug called soma that has no side effects. Families have been eliminated and children are conceived in peitre dishes and born in labratories. Here they are fed "words of wisdom" as they sleep. Phrases are repeated over and over during their developmental years so that they are ingrained in their brain. It is this way that people are convinced that they are completely happy with their class distinction, even if it is lower than others, and that the individual is nothing and society everything. They also learn not to fear death, and that permisquitity is much more fullfilling than love, which, along with the concept of families is ridiculed. All knowledge of God has been weeded out from societity.
The system is not completely perfect, for it is still...more Summary:
Brave New World is set in a futuristic Utopian society. The people in this world are ensured contentment through an intricate combination of biological conditioning, years of brainwashing, free love, and a drug called soma that has no side effects. Families have been eliminated and children are conceived in peitre dishes and born in labratories. Here they are fed "words of wisdom" as they sleep. Phrases are repeated over and over during their developmental years so that they are ingrained in their brain. It is this way that people are convinced that they are completely happy with their class distinction, even if it is lower than others, and that the individual is nothing and society everything. They also learn not to fear death, and that permisquitity is much more fullfilling than love, which, along with the concept of families is ridiculed. All knowledge of God has been weeded out from societity.
The system is not completely perfect, for it is still questioned at times by those who possess the intelligence to. Bernard Marx is one of these people. Despite all of the stimulated happiness around him he cannot find contentment, which he think lies with love he longs to find with a woman named Lenina. They take a trip to a Savage Reservation, a contained area where people are allowed to live however they want, unrestricted by the utopian society. Here they meet Linda, who was left there, lost, while years ago on a vacation with the Director. She has given birth, a henious thing in this society, to John, who is now a grown man. They bring the two back home where they are gawked and and made into dispicable celebrities. John is very unhappy in this "brave new world" where all semblance of beauty, art, and God have been locked away or destroyed. After Linda dies John speaks speaks with a high ranking officail who tries to convince him that the society is perfect and God is unnessesary. Soonafter, John runs away and lives in seclusion in a lifehouse. He is disgusted by this society and his participation in it, so he regularly whips himself as a form of penence. People continue to watch John or "the savage" as they call him, and copy his actions like it is a sort of game. The story ends with John hanging himself.

Worldveiw Connections:
Through this book, Huxley asks the question where will technology leave us in the end. We see how, in the book, people have been manipulated by technology and live a sort of artificail existance. He also questions happiness and the basis for it. The people in the new world are convinced that they are content because they do not know any better. The savage voices Huxley's idea that there cannot be happiness without love and art, and with love comes pain.

Quotes:

"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desire and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions... Suggestions from the State."
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 2

"Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. 'O brave new world!' Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. 'O brave new world!' It was a challenge, a command."
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 15

"Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get."
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 16

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message 1: by SVK (last edited 03/09/2008 08:53PM)

03/09/2008 08:53PM

It's been a while since I read this. I like your summary of Huxley's purpose: "there cannot be happiness without love and art, and with love comes pain."

(Double check your quotes--some accidental duplications.)