Brave New World

Brave New World presents a futuristic society engineered perfectly around capitalism and scientific efficiency, in which everyone is happy, conform, and content — but only at first glance.

In the foreword to the 2007 edition of the book, Margaret Atwood wrote: “In a world in which everything is available, nothing has any meaning.” The London described in the book is such a world.

Humans are grown in bottles as needed to perform certain tasks, ranging from smart Alphas to “semi-moron” Epsilons. From birth, people are sleep-conditioned to stay in their caste, to prioritize easy pleasures, like “soma,” the perfect drug, and sex, and to consume as much as they can. As a result, everyone is easygoing, compliant, and constantly on a drug- or orgasm-high — and no one is ever alone.

Two of the book’s protagonists, the psychologist Bernard Marx and writer Helmholtz Watson, see through this veil of cheap satisfaction. Bernard wants a traditional, monogamous relationship — a big no-no in his promiscuous society — preferably with the beautiful but all-too-well-conditioned hatchery worker Lenina Crowne. Helmholtz feels a higher calling in his writing, but he can’t access his “latent power” while writing the drivel his job requires:

When you can have everything at the snap of your fingers, there’s nothing to strive for in life. No goals. Nowhere to go. And, sooner or later, not having a destination in life will make us restless. Humans are meant to move — and not just physically. Our brains need to exercise their wits. Our souls lust for creativity and beauty, and not just to see them, but to make them.

A constant state of satisfaction is its own kind of prison, and it is this prison Bernard and Helmholtz hope to escape from, one by taking the woman of his dreams on an adventurous trip, the other by penning some daring lines and reading them to his students. Of course, both of them get into trouble for breaking the mold, which brings us to the second lesson…

Unlike Helmholtz, who’s too smart for his own good but otherwise a perfect example of an Alpha, Bernard is slightly shorter than intended — some mishap during his “hatching” — and, as a result, often gets mocked by women, peers, and even his subordinates. Add to that his monogamous tendencies, and you have yourself a man whom others wish “weren’t so odd,” including Lenina. No matter how hard he tries to make up for it, however, Bernard can’t find any conformity. His drug-induced “soma holidays” never last, and even attending “Solidarity Service,” basically a synthetic-music-backed sex orgy, provides no lasting relief. Thankfully, Lenina agrees to accompany Bernard on what’s supposed to be a romantic…