Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

This book is about the earth in the future, when all sadness is engineered out of society. Below is my post for the book club (although this was my own choosing, not on the book club list).

I really enjoyed this book. The first chapter especially was a little creepy when they were describing how they engineer society, but beyond that the story was very interesting. The idea of a "happy" society that has no troubles or cares sounds nice, until you realize that they have all lost their free will. Being engineered to a certain class, trained up from birth to like what you do, and being drugged to continue to think there is nothing wrong with that. It's very interesting.

I thought the contrast between Lenina, Bernard, Helmholtz, John (the Savage), and Mustapha Mond was interesting. They represented the different people in the society, the different levels to which they fit into that society. Lenina represented the majority of people, going along with what they had been taught, not wanting to see any of the bad, and willing to take "holidays" as often as possible. Bernard and Helmholtz were on the fringe, having minds and ideas of their own, not wanting to just go along with everyone else. The difference, however, between Bernard and Helmholtz is that Bernard, I think, was just tired of not fitting in, being made fun of and spoken of negatively, and used that as an excuse to be a renegade, whereas Helmholtz truly did not go along with society and was not afraid to speak out and be different. He didn't care that he didn't fit it. I think deep down, Bernard really just wanted to be like everyone else and was upset that he wasn't.

John was raised outside of the society, always dreaming of being a part of it. Since his mother was from the civilized world, but he was born as a savage, he was rejected by the people he grew up with. When he did make it in to civilized society, he found that he didn't want to be there. Because of the works of Shakespeare he had read, he thought civilized society was what it was before they all became happy and productive. John was looking for what the world used to be, when people had real feelings.

The character that surprised me the most was Mustapha Mond. He had the knowledge that Helmholtz and John had, but he declined the opportunity to go to an island to be with people like him in order to keep society the way it was. I thought that decision was intriguing.