You know, this review could start out, “this book’s an oldie but a goodie,” since it’s from 1932. But instead, a more accurate summary would be, “this book’s an oldie but a devastatingly and disturbingly accurate picture of the crappy direction a lot of things in this world are heading.” I guess that doesn’t have the same ring to it, though.
Brave New World has been on my list for a long time. It came up repeatedly in a class I was listening to about the rise of pre-totalitarianism in the modern world, specifically as the example of soft totalitarianism. In other words, the powerful doesn’t have to put their boot to your face to hold you down (hard totalitarianism) if you’re not trying to get up because you’re happy and entertained. So that’s the setup of Brave New World. Basically, what if no one fought back against corruption because they were fat and happy?
I see a lot of that today, honestly. The book has a particularly disturbing view of sex and sexuality that I’m sure was especially shocking in 1932 but now just feels like the entertainment a lot of people slurp up. Gross. Maybe that is the point of reading this kind of book in 2022—seeing how far society has come, or gone.
In contrast to, for example, Fahrenheit 451, this book didn’t have much story. There’s a lot of characters that are more representative of groups than individuals. And there’s certainly no one to root for because all the characters are heinous. You briefly think one character has a chance to be not horrible, but then he is, too. I think you’re supposed to feel like society ruined/corrupted him, but I kind of think he was headed that way already.
This book will mostly fall into the arena of “will bring this up as a past read in conversation if someone acts like I don’t understand the philosophy of the topic” —and other than that, I’ll try not to think about it again.
