Rating: 
Summary: Where is true fulfillment found then, Huxley?
Review: I listened to this book on audiocassette, and as I listened, I kept asking myself - what is Huxley getting at? What is he preaching with this book? It was obvious he had a point. But I don't think the point is as obvious as we (the people of 2003 - living in a type of Brave New World) assume it to be. It is not condemnation of utopia. That is too blatently obvious throughout the book.
I think Huxley was hinting at something more subtle. Perhaps he himself did not understand the answers to the questions he was exploring.
Personally, I think that the most interesting issue in Brave New World is the way that Huxley deals with the existence of God and mankind's basic need for a supreme being. Yes, Huxley painted a clearer portrait of the future than even he could have guessed. Yes, Huxley was a master at pointing out the tragic trend of people to distract and amuse themselves without thought, for the purpose of avoiding truth. But - I think that his real emphasis was on that very "Truth." Utopias are created because man does not want to acknowledge the need for God. And Huxley's theme alternates between a denial of the need for God(clearly, the God of Christianity) and an acknowledgment that, for every person, some god is essential.
An example of Huxley's real emphasis is found in John the Savage and his coming face to face with sacrifice. He wants to redeem himself, give himself up for a greater being - and, in the end, he offers his "supreme sacrifice." But John's sacrifice is tainted. He strove to be pure, but he was hindered by an orgy, by soma, by sin that only he knew to be sin. Is Huxley essentially saying, "There can be no perfect sacrifice"? Is he saying that we beat ourselves up for a nonexistent God only because(like John) we have been conditioned to believe in God? John himself rejected the latter argument in his conversation with the Controller. But at the end of the book, it seems that the Controller turned out right.
It is interesting to note that John, in a sense, was a Christ-like figure. Perhaps Huxley intentionally created that similarity.
What about John's plea that he must lose himself in something greater...more pure than himself? John tried to make an atonement for himself and he tried to redeem the people around him. He failed to do either.
In the end, the "civilized" people found greater fulfillment losing themselves in an "ogie-pogie" orgy to Ford(their man-made deity)than any fulfillment John ever found in sacrifice and "trying to be good" on his own (John's man-made deity was himself).
Throughout the book, Huxley seemingly points out the necessity of sacrifice, and of losing oneself in something greater. There are many other references to Christianity in this book. I'm still not exactly sure what Huxley is getting at. Obviously, he is saying there is no real happiness in fulfilling your every lust. But he also seems to be suggesting that neither is there any satisfaction in denying those lusts or giving them up for a greater good.
This book made me think. However, I don't think I can swallow Huxley's theory of religion like a blind fish.
Huxley asks the question: Where is true fulfillment and happiness found?
But he offers no answers.
Perhaps the question ought to be: Can we ever find fulfillment of desire and true happiness without knowing God? Or rather, can we know God except through Christ? (John the Savage understood sacrifice and giving himself up for what he thought was god, but he didn't come to God through Christ. He came through Himself and he was a failure.) This core truth of Christianity (Christ's sacrifice for mankind) is the axis upon which spins a world of pleasure-seekers who love to avoid the truth. I think that people can only understand and apply the message of Brave New World when they read it with minds that understand the truth. Huxley (and John the Savage) is right: there is no real fulfillment or satisfaction or pleasure without sacrifice. Neither is there true joy in sacrificing ourselves, with nothing returned to us but pain. But Huxley failed to take it a step further. So did John the Savage. Because the truth is that there is perfect peace in accepting someone else's (Christ's) perfect sacrifice for us. And deep down, we all know that is the truth.
Rating: 
Summary: Scary to think.
Review: After reading this book the one thing i felt was fear. What i was afraid of im afraid i cannot totally say without spoiling the book. What i can say is this, Huxley was a literary prophet his work in Brave new world was so prophetic it scares me. Enjoy this book or not you must see the signifigance of is and its referrence to society and the decline. Please to better yourself and society, read this book.
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Summary: It's time to come back to this one.
Review: I remember being forced to read this back in my senior year of high school and hating every single word of it. Now, after a few years, and at a few urgings from friends, I find this to be frighteningly insightful and enjoyable read. The syposis is about a near perfect world where everyone bioengineered and predestined into a caste system mere moments after the egg is fertilized. But that's okay because conditioning, sex and feel-good drugs make every one in this brave new world happy with what they are doing and who they are. For high school seniors about to read this book, I suggest the best way to read BNW is to approach it as a thinking-man's sci-fi novel. No doubt your teacher will go on and on about symbolism, themes and messages, making the book more pretentious than it actually needs to be. But there is some great stuff to think about. For example, what I found highly enjoyable was the fact that this was written fifty years before the first test tube baby and close to seventy years before Dolly the cloned sheep was conceived. The narrative is contemporary and save for a few trips to the dictionary, no more difficult to get through than reading Sagan, Herbert, Clark or even Crichton. When it does get to the philosophic debate towards the end, it's too late and you are hooked. The verbal battle between John Savage and Moustafa Mond is fast, scathing and radical and presented in a dialogue that is accessible. I enjoyed this part much more the second time around. I leave it to the reader to find thier own interpretation of Huxley's "message". There is one and it's very obvious. But I beg you not to over-intellecualize the enjoyment out of this fine book. Highly recommended whether you are in high school or not!
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Summary: So, what is happiness?
Review: Curiously enough, "Brave New World" is about happiness. Huxley describes an anti-utopian society where everyone is happy, everyone is "programmed" to be happy while leading the life they are "programmed" to lead. And then, all of a sudden, we're facing John the Savage, who comes from a reservation, and what he asks for is the right to get cancer and syphilis, the right to become old and ugly, the right to be unhappy. "Brave New World" deals with a lot of issues that are important today, for example: do we have the right to make people "happy"? If there was a drug available that had no side effects, but made everyone content, would it be ok to take it on regular basis? The world Huxley describes is too close to reality for comfort. The world we live in hasn't become like that (yet), but then there are things like cloning, genetic engineering and other scientific "achievements" that allow changing nature - and they are accepted as normal. Man is becoming a product whose properties can be chosen as seen fit; who is bothered by the ethic problems that come along when it comes to accepting giving birth to a third female child, not a male one, really? A frequently overlooked detail of the book is that, although the human society located in the reservations is "better" than the "civilized" world and the relationships between people there are more alike those of our society, that society doesn't accept John - just because he's different and partly because of his mother's "sins". Which, by the way, presents another important question: his mother is "programmed" to sin - can she be held responsible? "When progress becomes one's God, one dies a slave."
Rating: 
Summary: Like 1984 but worse
Review: I found that the idea behind a Brave New World was intresting, but the book itself was pretty boring. Brave New World is a lot like 1984. For example it dealt with society in the feature and described a totalatarian government. Except in Brave New Wold there is not much of a story line and you never get to know the characters. The whole book is pretty much just describing how their society is run. Another poroblem I found with this book is that there is never a climax and nothing exciting happens. I was pretty disappointed after reading because it had the potential to be so much better.
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Summary: JUST BUY IT ALREADY
Review: I never saw the point of buying a book rather than checking it out of the library - why would you read something again if you already know what's going to happen? This book changed all that (of course). It's easy to read because the language is descriptive without being wordy or archaic and VERY hard to put down because something is always happening. I planned to read a chapter a night but I usually wound up reading three or four. One caveat: read the prologue after you read the book because 1)it gives away the ending, and 2)you'll get more out of it that way.
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Summary: john becker's review
Review: This book was very confusing for me. It started out very slow and didnt introduce the main characters till the middle of the book. It reminds me of the book "1984". It takes place in the future and most everyone is under control ecept for the people with free minds live on resirvations. They keep the people under control with a drug called "soma". It drugs them so they dont know whats going on. I do not recommend this book to anyone [...]
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Summary: Is happiness worth the price of individual thought?
Review: When Brave New World was published (in the 1930s), the thought of a totalitarian form of government taking over a large portion of the world (or even the whole world) was not impossible. Today, of course, that threat seems more distant, but the possibility is still there. The most horrifying effect of this new, dictatorial civilization is the corruption of art and science. As Huxley himself points out in his foreword to this edition, his "Brave New World" is one in which science has been greatly perverted. Instead of science being used for the convenience of man, man is being molded and shaped according to the progress of science--a terrible possibility.
This Brave New World is one in which everyone is happy. This happiness comes, though, at the expense of both passion and thought. People are happy because they cannot be passionate--they do not pine over a lost love, do not desire anything they can't have (they have sexually promiscuous relationships indiscriminately, and say "everyone belongs to everyone"), and do not ever feel sorrow at the death of someone they know. They are created artificially, and thus have no parents or familial connections. They never marry. And even if they DO ever feel depressed or overwhelmed, they can always take soma (a mind-altering drug which does the job of alcohol and narcotics without the side-effects) and take a 'holiday' from their troubles.
People are 'conditioned' to feel and act a certain way from conception. There is no concept of instinct--every ideal, thought, feeling and belief a person has comes about both because of certain injections they received while fetuses and because of various messages played to them in their sleep when children. In effect, they are programmed, and feel no pain or sorrow because they are not conditioned to. This raises an interesting question--are these people really oppressed? After all, they are happy, they feel none of the sorrows and difficulties that free-thinking people do. And their lost liberties (thought, feeling, etc) are not missed--in fact, they don't even know they should miss them. "Mother" is an obscene word, and so is "chastity."
The central conflict of this book comes when a "savage" (from a 'savage' reservation in the Southern US where people are allowed to continue with familial and religious beliefs, but not allowed to leave) is brought from the reservation to live in society. His home on the reservation was dirty, stinky, and full of hate, cruelty, and disease, yet, in the end, he actually prefers this kind of existence to the carefree one he is forced to live. In effect, he would rather have liberty, and all the pain that comes with it, than ignorant bliss.
This is one of the most thought-provoking novels of the twentieth century, and deserves a place next to such books as 1984, Animal Farm, and Slaughterhouse Five. It is perhaps less-known than these other classics, but it is every bit as good and ingenious a story, and every bit as poignant in its look at society.
Rating:
Summary: Sparks the ol' Noggin'
Review: Very compelling well written work. Make you think just what a "perfect" society really is. Must we lose our human qualities to reach the so called utopia?
Rating:
Summary: a must-read
Review: This classic dystopia is a must-read for anyone interested in society and science and what it means to be human. Sadly, many people forget the lessons put forth in this book, and continue to attempt to push for "advancements" including Frankenstein-like horrors, from growing fetuses for spare parts in the future to unbridled genetic germline engineering. Great book, well-written and plenty of apropos issues.
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