Boekverslag : Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 668 woorden.
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 668 woorden.
Title
Brave New World
First year of publishing
1932
Summary
In the year 632 (after Ford), there is a New World society. The motto is Community, Identity, and Stability. There is no love, no individualism, and people do not have extreme emotions. There is also a technique, which makes it possible to raise babies in bottles. Therefore, the people do not have a mother, a father, or other family so they can not feel strong love. People are made in just five classes (Alpha to Epsilon). The alpha's are the most intelligent, and the epsilons the most stupid.
The main-characters are John the Savage, Bernard Marx (both alpha) and Lenina Crown (beta). Bernard and Lenina are colleagues. Lenina is a pretty girl, who is very popular by the alphas. Bernard has strong individual feelings, and that is not normal for these years. Because of that, the director wants to send him to Iceland. When Bernard and Lenina visit the Indian reservation, they meet John. Lenina falls in love with John, but John is not a man for this brave new world. He wants that the world is just as his mother (Linda) tells him. The characters of Lenina and John are completely conflicting. Lenina has sexual relations with all her friends. John finds that disgusting.
There is a big discussion between John and the controller. John thinks that the brave new world is madness. God is not important anymore, there is no danger, no love and no pain. All there is, is soma (a drug), feelies (sort of cinema) and a scent organ (which creates happy atmosphere's).
When Linda dies, John has a lot of anger. The people around him think that it is just normal. His friends, Bernard and Helmholtz went to Iceland. John wants to join them, but they only give him a house on a hill (in Surrey). There he can live as an individual.
Because John thinks of Linda and Lenina, he tortures himself whith a whip. After an emotional meeting with Lenina, he commits suicide.
Characters
John, the Savage (alpha)
John grows up as a white boy in the Indian Reservation with the old cultures. When they bring him back into the current civilisation, he hates the brave new world. He knows the big stories of Shakespeare, and feels the meaning of them. Deep emotions, individualism, and pain are very important to him. He loves Lenina, but they can not have a relation. He is an individualist, who is not persuadable.
Bernard Marx (alpha)
Bernard is misshaped due to a fault when he was an embryo. He has individual feelings, and he likes to be alone. He likes to be important, but he is not very popular (because of his misshape). Bernard is not very conditioned and he feels isolated. He is not completely at one (like John) with the brave new world.
Lenina Crowne (beta)
Lenina is a pretty girl, who is popular by the alpha men. She is not completely normal in the brave new world, because she has relations for a few months (quiet long in these years). When she meets John, she falls in love with him, but a relation is impossible. (She is too normal in this society).
Theme
The theme is, striving after a perfect world, without pain, war, strong emotions, and fear, at the cost of individualism.
Huxley describes a perfect stable world. Everybody is happy, except the people, who know the world can be different. Everybody gets just what he or she wants. They do not know there can be another society. Only a few people can think further. They are complaining against the "Brave New World". There is no way, to get out of this society, and go into the old one.
Opinion
The story was very good and original. Huxley describes a futuristic and even possible society. It lets me think about the (my) future. However, I do not think it will be once reality.
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