Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Part 2

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 156

  June 5, 2017 

Book 47 - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley (1932)
 Part 2 - 37-86
Reading Time - 1 hour

Apparently this Brave New World is built upon consumption and stability. The goal is to have very stable individuals and thereby create a stable world. Consumption is key... all humans are expected to consume things... the more, the better. It kind of reminds me of our own society in which consumption is becoming the be-all and end-all. We are no longer citizens... we are consumers. In Brave New World... people are brainwashed (in their sleep as children) to believe that it is better to buy a new thing than to mend an old thing. That isn't so far off from today... where we are faced with the planned obsolescence of everything from TVs to blenders to smart phones.

We also meet Bernard Marx, a rather stunted Alpha who is different than the others (people speculate that he had some alcohol dumped in his bottle when he was a fetus). Because he is shorter, he is treated as different and feels different. He's a bit of an odd duck to be sure and reminds me a bit of 1984's "hero". It's a Brave New World and Bernard doesn't fit in... wonder what will happen to him.