Brave New World - Aldoux Huxley - Part 3

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 157

  June 6, 2017 

Book 47 - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley (1932)
 Part 3 - 87-141
Reading Time - 1 hour

Everyone is Happy in the Brave New World. Happy thanks to soma, a drug that puts them in a jovial state (or sends them into dreamland). Much better than alcohol because there's no ill effects afterwards. Our friend Bernard is in trouble with the Director of the centre where he works. He isn't behaving like he should outside of work... he is not behaving with infantile decorum but being "different". He's threatened with transfer to a centre in Iceland if doesn't shape up. Unfortunately, the Director while signing a permit for Bernard to visit the Savage Reservation, reminisces about his own trip there when he was younger and how the woman he went with disappeared. Bad mistake Director!

Bernard has a date planned with a co-worker, Lenina, and he takes her on a visit to the Savage Reservation. It's a fenced off area in New Mexico that has "savages" (basically Indigenous people and others who aren't tweaked like the folk outside the wall). While there, they find the lost woman and her (gasp) son. Bernard realizes that this woman is the Director's woman-friend and that the son is the Director's son! People in a Brave New World don't live in families and since they are decanted from a bottle (rather than born), the idea of a mother and father is abhorrent to people. Bernard is a smart guy and gets permission (from the Controller) to bring the woman her son back to civilization.

When he gets back to work, the Director has decided to send him to Iceland but... Bernard brings in the woman and her son (this is front of a bunch of Alphas) and... well... the Director resigns immediately. He's been accusing Bernard of being weird and... my goodness... here he got a woman pregnant and has a son by her!

Holy... it's a weird world!