Blog Post #13

Beginning this blog post I started to do option 3: Engaging in E-Media. Being that I work around technology I knew that I wasn't going to be able to really do option 3. Since I love to read I decided to go with option 4. I read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Aldous Huxley, born in 1894 in England, was one of England's most accomplished authors. When he wrote Brave New World in 1932, he offended many of his readers. When I first started to read this book I was kind of offended by it myself. I have read many books about sex and drugs but none of them touched me the way this one did.
The setting was in London of 632 A.F. This book is about the future where they use sleep techniques and just technology to make the world a happier place. Everything from the present time has been done away with. Such as marriage, child bearing, emotions.
According to this book, sex is like a social affair. At an early age children are being introduced to sex. For the ones who can reproduce they are encouraged to use birth control. Instead of marriage, they believe in "everyone belongs to everyone else" because the thought of having a family would be considered having an addiction to porno.
Children are no longer created by sexual contact but instead by "decanted bottles" and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centers. During the time of development each fetus are divided into five classes and then marked a "Plus" or "Minus" member. Ranking from highest to lowest Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon determined what their status in the world would be and how they would develop.
Emotions no longer exist because if they did no one would be happy and if no one is happy then the world has problems. Instead they were controlled by a drug called soma, a pill that takes its users on a hangover-free "holiday".
There are five main characters, three of which who are considered to be misfits. Lenina, a social butterfly, was known as not being as slutty as the other women. Bernard, an Alpha Plus psychologist who is a loner because he doesn't look like the rest of the Alpha Plus. Helmholtz Watson, a professor at the College of Emotional Engineering in the Department of Writing, loves to write poetry but can never publish it because it is not allowed. John, the Salvage, born by a Beta who got lost on a "holiday" but raised by Indians was brought back to the New World by Bernard and Lenina after one of their "holidays". Mustapha Mond, the world controller of Western Europe was once a physicist doing deep thought research on real science. When discovered what he was doing he was given the choice of being put on an island or to become a world controller. Of course he chose to give up science, and now he is in control of people happiness. Being the person he was before the controller, he has a collection of forbidden literature locked away in his office.
After seeing his mother die from soma, John went on a rampage to get rid of the drug. With the help of his friends Helmholtz and Bernard, a riot broke out and the police were called. Being escorted to the controller, Bernard denied all part in the riot and blamed it all on John and Helmholtz. Seeing that Bernard and Helmholtz were being transferred to an island of their choice, John exiled himself in an abandoned lighthouse. Doing a ritual the Indians does as a purifying, John whips himself in the open where it is caught on film and shown to the public. After being shown, hundreds of the public came to see John for his violent behavior for themselves. When seeing Lenina, the woman he loves and blames, come to watch John attacks and whips her. Seeing John attack Lenina, the crowd goes mad with excitement. The next morning, when they return to see John act again they find that he has hanged himself.