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Christopher Becker's "The Book I Read" Paper

Christopher Becker

November 19, 2004

English 2500

Brave New World

At first, I was having a lot of trouble trying to figure out why Huxley’s “Brave New World” was on the list. It was interesting, to be sure, but it was against some stiff competition, and actually above books that I thought were much better. I was shocked that it was actually above “1984”, a book it is often compared to, and a book I think is superior in every way. And in reading up on “Brave New World”, I found out that it was received with only moderate acclaim (for its time). Critics complained (rightly so) that themes were more developed than characters, and I personally found his writing style to be, at times, tedious.

Then, conveniently enough, a friend of mine sent me a news article, which said that soon scientists will be able to determine, and even change, the eye and hair color and unborn children. That’s when I started to get it.

While it might not be as well written (from a technical standpoint) as other books, “Brave New World” gets such a high place on the list because is deals with topics that weren’t just relevant for a single period of time. They were relevant when Huxley wrote about them, and people quickly saw that as ten, twenty, thirty years passed, “Brave New World“ spoke on topics that continued to be relevant.

I was talking with my Mass Communication teacher about the staying power of certain movies, and we agreed that the most important factor in determining how long a movie is considered “important” is how long its subject matter remains relevant. It‘s the same with books. "1984” was focused on a fairly narrow topic, and thus stopped being relevant (or at least, became less relevant) when this concept was no longer present in the real world. But “Brave New World” deals with things relevant not only to Huxley’s society, but things that Huxley knew would still be around in the future.

In 1926, Huxley traveled to the United States for the first time, and some believe that this trip is what made Huxley so pessimistic about the future. After returning to Europe, he expressed his distaste for the state of affairs overseas in two very telling quotes:

“…the thing which is happening in America is a revaluation of values, a radical alteration for the worse of established standards' .”

“…the future of America is the future of the world."

Sound familiar? Whether one agrees with him or not, one cannot deny that Aldous’ worries from back in the 1930’s are the very concerns some people have all over the world: the “Americanization” of other countries; the changing values systems (or loss thereof); declining standards.

Everything in “Brave New World” is mass produced and manufactured on assembly lines in factories – very much like America in the 1920’s and ‘30’s, as mass production and assembly lines became the standard for manufactured goods. That’s why “God” is replaced with “Ford” in the society of “Brave New World” – Ford’s assembly line method of producing cars revolutionized everything. First, it was manufactured goods, but the assembly line formula was applied to almost everything; food, clothing, electronics, and even media. Early on in radio and movie history, companies actually mass produced programs and films to meet demand. Movie studios in particular were told to recycle anything they could, because they had a quota – maybe one studio would be told they had to make 16 Westerns this year, or 20 Romantic Comedies. Huxley just takes it one step further by applying it to humans. It took God one whole day to create man – just imagine if he’d had Ford’s technology.

So why does this make the book important? Well, take a look around. Things haven’t changed – if anything, the picture Huxley painted is growing more true every day. We’re still very much an assembly-line society. Our primary concern is to allow supply to meet demand, regardless of values and standards. According to Christoph Bode’s analysis of the book, and of Huxley himself:

“Huxley is of the opinion that modern leisure activities, like cinemas or newspapers, make people dull, because they prevent them from thinking or being active.”

The mass production of such dulling activities will inevitably desensitize people. Heck, look at today’s TV. It is generally accepted that most shows on today (Reality TV, for example) are pretty idiotic. But if TV is constantly flooded with idiotic programming, eventually people will begin to lose perspective. They won’t realize that these shows are stupid, because they have nothing smart to compare them to. Neil Postman draws the logical conclusion:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

And wouldn‘t you know it, that’s exactly what’s happening. Surveys and studies show that every year, people are reading less and less.

I also got to thinking about the original complaints about the book by critics, the primary one being that the themes of the book are more developed than the characters. While that is true, one could easily see it as a strength, for two reasons: the first reason being that the topics Huxley covers remain relevant today because he spent so much time and effort on developing them over characters. The second reason is that undeveloped characters in the society of “Brave New World” makes perfect sense. It’s almost a cruel joke on the reader - people complain that the characters are flat, two dimensional, when Huxley is actually saying to the reader “Guess what? If we’re not careful, this is who we’ll be.”

Ultimately, it’s that cruel joke that makes “Brave New World” such a compelling work - he paints a future that is so lifeless and bleak, yet at the same time, so easily attainable. By the time the year 1984 rolled around, people could take comfort in knowing that Orwell’s prophecy would not come true, but every day we are moving closer and closer to Huxley’s dystopia, whether we realize it or not. With “Brave New World”, Huxley made some bold predictions about the future of America, and indeed, the world. And by the looks of things, they’re coming true.

It’s almost unfair to categorize “Brave New World” as fiction anymore. I’m reminded of a quote that FX is using to promote a movie premier:

“It’s all true. It just hasn’t happened yet.”