Brave New World

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

3/5 ⭐

Parts of this book deserved 5/5 stars, while others were painful to get through.

A bit of context and then we’ll get into the good, bad, and ugly of this book.

Brave New World is talked about in the same breath as other classic dystopian novels (think 1984, Handmaiden’s Tale, and Fahrenheit 451), and overall it earns its place in that pantheon.

It presents a manufactured Eden in which everyone is happy. The cost of that happiness? Art, science, religion, struggle, triumph, heroism, elation, failure, passion, and on and on.

Essentially it is a sterilized version of life where everyone receives exactly what they need, and don’t know enough (or aren’t allowed to know enough) to want anything more.

Now, the good:

At the end of this story the protagonist has a conversation with the leader of this “brave new world,” and they debate the impossible coexistence of stable, uninterrupted happiness, with truth. They, according to the author, cannot coexist.

Their conversation is riveting and thought provoking and makes the read worthwhile despite the bad, which we will move onto now.

The bad is that this book feels, at times, overwhelmingly pretentious. It beats the reader over the head with its message, while using a constant flow of Shakespeare quotes to do it.

Additionally, the world is so over the top, so ridiculous, that it was hard to suspend disbelief enough to care about the characters.

And now the ugly.

This book was written in 1932. And it shows. The treatment of the female characters, and women in general, is pretty painful to read.

The protagonist despises the woman he is infatuated with, for the very reason that he is infatuated by her.

In the closing moments of the book, he attacks her for making him feel lust, and spoiling his mission toward self-deprecation. As though the fault lay on her shoulders, not his.

Overall. A book worth reading for someone looking to check off the dystopian classics, but for anyone else…may not be worth the time.

Quotes:

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.”