Brave New World Aldous Huxley
Discuss This Book--I really enjoyed this book. It's a futuriistic view of the world, which is divided between a utopian civilization, and a cultish savage land.
The utopian civilization is a place where parenthood is an embarassing thought. Babies aren't born, they are "decanted" - all of them created, grown, and cultivated in bottles. A child's future is determined before it's ever decanted. Some are cloned into huge batches of identical twins. All children are conditioned to love whatever position they've been given in society. No one wishes they were a part of any class but their own. Not even those of the lowest caste. The two main characters are Bernard and Lenina, who are of a higher class. Bernard has some strange ideas (strange to the other characters in the book, but a bit more rational to those of us reading the book.)
Bernard and Lenina take a trip to a savage reservation. Lenina is constantly disgusted at the uncleanliness of the place, and horrified when she sees the elderly, and a mother nursing a baby. To escape from such experiences, she relies on Soma (a wonder drug, similar to alcohol, but minus all negative effects.)
Inside of the reservation Bernard meets an interesting savage. He is the son of a civilized woman who was accidentally trapped on the reservation with no way to go home. The mother desperately misses the civilized world, but is very ashamed of being a mother. Bernard comes to learn that the father of this savage is a very important person in the civilized world. A person he would like to see put out of power.
Bernard arranges to have the mother and the savage taken back to the civilized world with him. At a critical moment, Bernard produces the savage and the mother, showing everyone that this important being is a father (gasp!). Embarassed, he resigns from his high position, and retreats from public view. Bernard is given charge of the savage, whom everyone wants to get a good look at. This makes Bernard rather popular for a while, something he's never experienced.
Following are the experiences of the savage himself. He finds that he doesn't like civilization, and tries to retreat from this world without morals or religion.
I really enjoyed this book. When I came to the end of it, I wished that it would keep going. I definitely recommend this book.
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