Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

In this book, Aldous Huxley introduces us to a futuristic utopia called the World State, where the population is civilized, happy and mass produced. Brave New World starts off by introducing us to the Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center where people are produced in bottles, mostly through a process called Bokanovsky's Process. This process is completed by producing up to ninety-six embryos per egg instead of producing one embryo from one egg. The people produced in the hatchery are all predestined to fulfill certain social positions within the World State. The social classes within the World State are Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons. Alphas hold the highest social standing out of the five classes. Alphas along with Betas are not products of Bokanovsky's Process and therefore have no twins and are smarter, stronger and hold positions within society that require responsibility. The others are contaminated while still in their bottles to stunt intelligence, strength, height and appearance. The Bokanovsky process is used along with conditioning to create social stability. The population experiences conditioning from the time that they are "decanted" and large sets of twins are conditioned to work the same positions within the society.

In this London based utopia, there is no knowledge of God but what God would be is replaced with the founder of the new world, Ford. People are no longer born into families, they do not experience sickness, sadness, old age, isolation, passion or any sort of prolonged gratification. The population is conditioned to be happy, peaceful, passive, to know and love their position/class, and participate in societal "norms" that are created to maintain stability. Some of these "norms" include: sexual relations with each other because relationships and exclusivity are forbidden, to take "soma" (a drug used for leisure or to escape unwanted feelings, ideas) on a regular basis and especially if experiencing any negative feelings or thoughts contrary to conditioning, regularly participating in recreational sports and "feelies", which are depth-less movies where viewers can experience physical actions that occur in movies.

Bernard Marx is introduced as sort of an outcast who is an Alpha but everyone believes that alcohol was accidentally slipped into his bottle before "decanting", which made him "different". He does not seem to fit into society because he often feels like the norms in society are silly and has opposing ideas and questions about life. Bernard wants to have intimate dates with Lenina and is not really interested in relations with other women, but she thinks he is weird for this behavior because "everyone belongs to everyone" in the World State. Bernard takes Lenina to a Mexican reservation where Indian savages live. These "savages" are born normally outside of the World state and live without the technology and pleasures that the World State has. While there they encounter John and Linda, a mother and son who are not natives of the reservation. They find out that Linda was actually a resident of the London World State and was accidentally left at the reservation years back while pregnant. While on the reservation, Linda was constantly ridiculed for practicing the social norms from the World State. Unlike Linda, the people on the reservation believed in monogamy and exclusive relationships. Her son, John was born on the reservation but was never accepted as a native so Linda taught him what she knew from conditioning and from afar he watched and learned from the natives.

Bernard and Lenina return to London with John and Linda where Bernard becomes an instant celebrity because everyone wants to know about the savage (they are all repulsed by Linda's old age, flabby skin and discolored teeth). John is very attracted to Lenina but cannot accept her promiscuity. Linda dies and no one shows any caring emotion (they are conditioned to not have emotional attachments to each other), and John becomes enraged with the norms, vices and behaviors in the new world. He attempts to start a rebellion where only one person joins him, Hemholtz Watson, who is a friend of Bernard's and also feels that the World State lacks depth and the option of free will. The rebellion ends, unsuccessfully, because the people of the World State are conditioned to know and only want what they are predestined to have; they are ignorant to anything outside of what they are taught. Because of their inability to fit into society, Hemholtz and Bernard are given the choice to be sent to an isolated island of their choice, where they can continue their alternative way of thinking and behaving. John chooses to relocate to a life of solitude and proper behavior in a lighthouse, only to be found and harassed again as the "savage". He whips himself while their to punish himself and avoid the vices and behaviors of the World State. In the end he is overwhelmed by "fans" of his and when he sees Lenina among the crowd he cannot bear the emotions that arise in him because she represents everything that he hates about the World State and he begins to whip her until he passes out. The next day, more "fans" arrive to find that John had hanged himself.

I loved this quote:

"A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it...As the art and science of manipulation come to be closer understood, the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic institutions." p. 268

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited. New York: Harper Perenial Modern Classics, 2005.