Thinking of reading Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? Well, think again because it sucks.

Synopsis:

• It's the future! (dur)
• No one is born anymore – they gestate in bottles or tubes or something!
• There are five castes!
• The lowest caste gets an impaired gestation to ensure impaired cerebral function!
• The highest caste doesn't!
• The other castes get varying levels of impairment!
• This is to ensure they will be happy in their jobs!
• Everyone receives conditioning and sleep therapy/teaching!
• OK!
• Everyone fucks everyone else and "everybody belongs to everybody"!
• Monogamy is considered anti-social!
• Displays of emotion are considered anti-social!
• If anything becomes to dire or boring or whatevs, people take soma!
• OK!
• Shock horror there is an OUTSIDER!!!!!
• OK!
• He (of course it's a he – this book was published in 1932) goes to an Indian reservation!
• Here he finds the NOBLE SAVAGE!
• He brings the SAVAGE back to civilisation!
• The SAVAGE is a hit!
• Suddenly the OUTSIDER is popular!
• He likes being popular!
• So much so that he becomes a functioning part of society!
• OK!
• BUT!
• The SAVAGE finds this BRAVE NEW WORLD strange and terrifying!
• CULTURE SHOCK!
• He no longer wants to be exhibited!
• He flees society!
• OK!
• Sidenote: About this stage in the novel the author commences with a long and boring and indulgent discourse on this modern society through the SAVAGE's knowledge of Shakespeare. It gets really, really tedious and it's really, really obvious.
• OK!
• But the people make a movie of him!
• They come to his hermitage and harrass him!
• The noble SAVAGE kills himself!
• THE END!

OK, so that synopsis is basically the whole review.

Honestly, the start of this book is pretty good. The structure of the society is coherent and abhorrent. The first part of the book is a run-down of how the gestation and promotion/retardation of the fœtuses thinly disguised as a tour of the facility for new workers, which is fine. I suggest you read this bit then skip forward to somewhere in the book where everyone's answer to the problems of life is "chillax – take a soma."

Then stop reading and create your own ending to the book. Skip the SAVAGE altogether (his name is John). Skip Bernard Marx and the other guy with pretensions. Mustapha Mond, World Controller for Western Europe, is probably the greatest character in the book. You should read the part where he acknowledges that Bernard Marx's theories on the conduct of society are probably right but are heretical and dangerous to the stability of society.

The main theme of the book is that stability and happiness are essentially exclusive.

Written by: Zach.
Tags: aldous huxley, books, brave new world, literary criticism.