Brave New World is a novel by Aldous Leonard Huxley published in 1932. It deals with several key themes such as reliance on technology, individuality (or the lack thereof), the ultimate dilemma of truth or happiness, and much more. It takes place in a future dystopian (or utopian, depending on your stances) London in which struggle is forgotten and happiness is mandatory.
The life of a London citizen begins in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Here, a single egg cell can produce up to 70 identical twins, each of which are brought up and raised in the factory. Throughout their time here they are conditioned – that is, exposed to alcohol, deprived of oxygen, injected with hormones, and more – depending on their future position in society as a member of one of the five castes. There are the Alphas, at the top, followed by Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and then Epsilons, the very bottom class. These can be comparable to the bourgeoisie down to the proletariat, with one main difference – everyone is happy. These can be comparable to the bourgeoisie down to the proletariat, with one main difference – everyone is happy.
Alphas, implied to be the most intelligent, hold high-ranking jobs such as teachers, directors, or other age-specific titles such as sleep hypnosis experts. They are tall and strong. Epsilons, in contrast, are small and “simian,” incapable of complex thought. The lower castes are conditioned to admire and stay out of the way of the upper castes, and they in turn are taught to despise the lower castes. This separation of the masses allows for society to run smoothly, with the most menial labour handed out to the lower castes and the critical thinking jobs to the higher castes. They are conditioned to enjoy their occupations.
Pain, struggle, and depression are all foreign concepts to the citizens. The city is bent over backwards in ensuring everyone’s comfort, even if shallow. Countless methods of meaningless yet stimulating activities are found around every corner – for example, Obstacle Golf, a futuristic physical game, or the Feelies, a sort of movie that can be felt as well as seen or heard – and there is always a bustle to attend these events. In the case that one does feel slightly upset, they can take a soma – a pill that seems to magically cure any sort of discontent. Everyone takes soma and seems to know its advertising slogans by heart: “One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy”, “A gramme in time saves nine”, “A gramme is always better than a damn”, and the like.
Nobody is left to their own devices; in fact, the idea of solitude is considered strange. At the same time, having close interests in other people (such as romantic or, God forbid, maternal) is especially considered outlandish and even taboo. Promiscuity is normalized and encouraged from a young age – as they say, “Everybody belongs to everyone else”. Old age and diseases don’t exist, and the concept of death is quickly desensitized. Art is dead, individuality is quashed, and Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is named and revered as a godlike figure.
Everyone is happy in the well-oiled machine that is London.
Bernard Marx is an Alpha who works for the Central London Hatchery as a psychologist (sleep hypnosis expert). He was born with a defect that made him smaller than all other Alphas, something that led to his lifelong scrutiny due to the rigid visual class separation cues. He is insecure and judgmental of the state of his city, choosing to be miserable instead of wallowing in shallow pleasures. He does this not to seek truth but because, deep inside, he feels himself better than the others, and feels a need to have some sort of intellectual leverage. Something to prove that he is better than the stupid masses.
Lenina Crowne is an (implied) Beta who also works at the Hatchery. She is a token London citizen and abides to all its rules, however, she is strange in the sense that she has close romantic or sexual relations with (generally) one man at a time. At the time of the story, she has her eyes on Bernard.
Helmholtz Watson is an Alpha lecturer, Emotional Engineer, and friend of Bernard. Contrary to the latter, he is larger than most, but still experiences a sense of "otherness” due to his physicality (the reason they became acquainted). He, too, actively scrutinizes society, seeking truth for the sake of breaking his own intellectual boundaries.
John (often referred to as the Savage) has lived in the reservation all his life. He is unfamiliar with the ways of society, having been raised on a book of Shakespeare’s plays and the cruel ways of his mother’s lover. He takes a liking to Lenina but scolds himself for his feelings, displaying his strong will when he whips himself as a form of self-punishment.
Bernard and Lenina decide to take a trip to the Savage Reservation, a place where “savages” (people living on the land, unaware of the hyper-civility of London) live. There exists things such as religion, pain, old age, and death, something that frightens Lenina and later causes her to go into a soma-induced coma. There they meet Linda, a former London citizen, and John, her son. She was lost there many years ago during a trip with Bernard’s boss and had no choice but to live with the Savages, birth her own child (something blasphemous), and experience weight gain and aging and pain and misery. She practically throws herself upon the visitors; Bernard, seeing his opportunity to stand out in London, agrees to take the two of them back home.
Naturally, the citizens are very curious of these new phenomena, and line up at Bernard’s door to see the Savage as if her were a zoo animal. Bernard is all too happy to live up to their sycophancy until John decides not to come out and see his visitors, which causes Bernard’s status to suddenly plummet.
Lenina, too, takes a liking to John. She tries to seduce him in an all-too London fashion, something considered quite normal for this society, but he loses his temper, calling her a whore and reciting Shakespeare’s lines like verses. Directly after, at the Hospital for the Dying, he and a group of children taking a tour witnesses the soma-induced death of his mother. Grieving, he is enraged at their childlike curiosity (“Why is she so fat?”) and general indifference toward the corpse. He storms out of the building and causes a ruckus among a group of Delta workers by taking their soma ration and tossing it out a window.
Hearing of this, Bernard and Helmholtz rush to the scene. The latter immediately rushes to John’s aid, throwing punches at the same-faced droves, while Bernard tries to stop them weakly and escape from the scene. They are quickly stopped by the law enforcement and their soma-laced emotional fog and brought before Mustapha Mond, called His Fordship, one of ten World Leaders and the authority figure of London. It is here that they (mostly John and Mustafa) hold a profound, philosophical discussion on what will become of them, the state of London’s society, and the age-old question: truth, or happiness? Though Mustafa seems to lean more toward happiness, John chooses the truth.
The story ends with John finding a home near the edges of civilization. It doesn’t take long for the news to find him; soon, his house is surrounded by the citizens of London who are eager to see the spectacle with their own eyes. An orgy ensues. In the aftermath, after realizing what he had done, John kills himself.