To gain further knowledge on the Excel theme of technology, I choose to read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. In this novel Huxley explains what may happen if the human race tries to create a utopia based on technology. This book expanded my knowledge of how technology and the quest for a perfect society can mix, creating a vial and intolerable society. The plot line of the book is very simple, but at the same time it is also very effective. The story takes place in London at least 632 years into the future. The novel starts off by explaining how children are born into the "brave new world". It explains how there are no families and children are created in cloning laboratories known as ...view middle of the document...
A curious Marx invites John to come to the Utopia with him and John eagerly agrees. The reader also learns at this time that John has fallen instantly in love with Lenina. Marx gets clearance from Mustapha Mond, the leader of the Utopian world, to transport the two savages back to Utopia with him and Lenina. Mond, with great interest grants the clearance. Lenina, who has never left Utopia, is shocked by all the filth and odd behavior she has seen on the savage reservation and takes a soma holiday, which is comparable to getting drunk. When Marx returns to Utopia, the D.H.C. (director of hatcheries) threatens to denounce him for partaking in unorthodox behavior. To the D.H.C.'s surprise, Marx introduces Linda and John, the D.H.C.'s illegitimate son and lover from the savage world. In efforts to keep Marx quite about his affair he decides that denouncing him was a bad idea after all. As John is shown Utopia, he immediately becomes a media icon. Everyone wants to see him and be with him. Soon, Lenina begins finding him attractive and wants to participate in erotic behavior, but John is more interested in a pure love. John had grown up reading Shakespeare and Lenina was raised in a hatchery, so their definitions of love would naturally contradict one another. Neither John nor Lenina realizes this and both end up longing for eachother and at the same time offending eachother by not showing the signs of each other's definition of love. Meanwhile, Marx has become extremely jealous of John because he feels he is stealing his only love, Lenina. Soon John's mother dies from an over dose of Soma and at the hospital. John, after watching his mother die is quite unhappy with the Utopia and he witnesses the low class "delta slaves" and offers them freedom. Since they are happy where they are the deltas take this as an insult and a riot breaks out. The riot is quickly broken up the police and Marx safely retrieves John. At this time Mond summons John, Marx and Marx's friend Helmholtz Watson. In this trial type confrontation John points out all the problems he sees with Utopia and Mond agrees but explains that we must pay the price of no art and no religion and so on to achieve a stable and happy society. Marx and Watson are both threatened with exile for unorthodox behavior and both were sentenced to exile. John further discusses the Utopian's weaknesses with Mond. They go back and forth arguing and this is Huxley's way of getting telling the reader all the bad points of a Utopian society. Mond and John never come to any agreement and it is Mond decision that J...
