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Learner
02-17-2012, 05:09 PM
(First of all: I’m not a native speaker so I excuse myself for my mistakes. Please feel free to correct my English.)

I know I’m committing sacrilege by this question but nevertheless: How do you assess the literary standard of Huxley’s novel “New Brave World”?

Undoubtedly, his satirical, social ideas, his humor here and there and the fact that he wrote the book in 1932 are astonishing. That’s why I enjoyed reading the novel, like some others books by Huxley.

But the characters and the plot seem to me rather fabricated for giving voice to all this ideas. There is only few live in them. And of course there is this prolixity... Many sentences and paragraphs could be deleted without any serious loss for the plot or even the expressed ideas.

I hope this admittedly provocative posting will cause an interesting debate.
:smilewinkgrin:

BookBeauty
02-17-2012, 07:35 PM
Hey, that's a few good points you've got there.

I've not read Brave New World in awhile, but from what I remember, John the Savage was very passionate. There was a lot of life there. And there was a great deal of agony and suffering from his mother, which I took as being very life-like.

The only points where I found there to be a dull, lifelessness sort, were the clones. Mostly because they had all been cloned, bred and conditioned to be a certain way, and act a certain way, so you can almost -smell- the monotony.

They lived only to do their 'duties', and for mindless indulgent pleasure through 'feelies' and 'soma'. (It's been a long time, I hope I got the names right, and concepts.)

That was purposeful, I think, on the part of Huxley. He wanted to show what society could become through parts of human nature and vices that mankind have a tendency to show.

And our world today is certainly taking on much of his vision, sadly.

Heidy
08-14-2012, 02:11 PM
Hey, that's a few good points you've got there.

I've not read Brave New World in awhile, but from what I remember, John the Savage was very passionate. There was a lot of life there. And there was a great deal of agony and suffering from his mother, which I took as being very life-like.

The only points where I found there to be a dull, lifelessness sort, were the clones. Mostly because they had all been cloned, bred and conditioned to be a certain way, and act a certain way, so you can almost -smell- the monotony.

They lived only to do their 'duties', and for mindless indulgent pleasure through 'feelies' and 'soma'. (It's been a long time, I hope I got the names right, and concepts.)

That was purposeful, I think, on the part of Huxley. He wanted to show what society could become through parts of human nature and vices that mankind have a tendency to show.

And our world today is certainly taking on much of his vision, sadly.


Nice point of view :)
I red this novel three times and i like it so much. Like u say, there is John the Savage or Bernard Marx that are really amazing characters but i prefer, for example, 1984 by Orwell (1984 and Brave new world are the same genre) because it's more a "novel" than a scientific essay about the future. However let's remember that Huxley is a doctor, and not a writer, so he has done a really good work at the end.

Awaiting eagerly your answers
greetings by Italy :hat: