In Brave New World Revisited (1958) Huxley himself describes BNW as a "nightmare". Typically, reading BNW elicits the very same disturbing feelings in the reader which the society it depicts has notionally vanquished - not a sense of joyful anticipation. This is because Huxley endows his "ideal" society with features calculated to alienate his audience. So how does Huxley turn a future where we're all notionally happy into the archetypal dystopia? If it's technically feasible, what's wrong with using biotechnology to get rid of mental pain altogether?īrave New World is an unsettling, loveless and even sinister place. Yet the knee-jerk response of "It's Brave New World!" to any blueprint for chemically-driven happiness has delayed research into paradise-engineering for all sentient life. Hence to treat his masterpiece as ill-conceived futurology rather than a work of great literature might seem to miss the point. Brave New World has come to serve as the false symbol for any regime of universal happiness.įor sure, Huxley was writing a satirical piece of fiction, not scientific prophecy. Aldous Huxley : Brave New World BRAVE NEW WORLD ?īrave New World (1932) is one of the most bewitching and insidious works of literature ever written.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |