Expect The Unexpected

Meeting the Savages

Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian fiction novel, Brave New Word, tells the story of how our reality would be if family, individuality, and love were taken away from humanity. As  Alpha-Plus, Bernard Marx, prepares to visit a Savage Reservation in Mexico with Lenina Crowne, he is able to share his thoughts of non-conformity with the system to Lenina who, of course, thinks he has gone mad. When they are finally able to reach the reserve, they discover something that they never even imagined of existing, they witness deadly famine and disease, dancing and rituals, sacrifices, and family. Lenina and Bernard meet John, a young man whose mother, Linda, a Beta who had visited the reserve more than twenty years ago but had been lost and forced to stay in the reserve. Linda tells Bernard and Lenina about how neither people of the “new world” would accept them because she was pregnant (with a World Controller’s baby), nor people from the reserve accepted them because they were “too white”, out of sympathy, Bernard offers to take both of them back to the “new world”.

My Thoughts On...

" -But queer that Alphas and Betas won't make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas and Epsilons down there.-

-All men are physico-chemically equal,-  said Henry sententiously.” (Huxley, 74)

This quote is said by Henry Foster, one of Lenina’s lovers, while explaining to her about the process of using human corpses as a way to give nutrients to the earth and grow better crops. What really impacted me was that, no matter what social class you came from and no matter who you are, it truly doesn’t matter in the end. Even today, equality is a reality that some people are just not able to accept. Just like Henry, who describes Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons as “nasty”, there are still people who think they are superior to others. It reminds me of all of the men that don’t think that women are equal so they don’t let them study and abuse them instead, of all of the men and women that don’t think homosexual couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples, and all of the people that still think white is the superior “race”.

“These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken (he couldn’t make head or tail of it, but it was wonderful, wonderful all the same) - they gave him a reason for hating Popé; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Popé himself more real.” (Huxley, 132)

This are some of the thoughts that John had when he first learned how to read. I guess that this is when he realized that words have the power to do both great and terrible things (for the record, Popé is one of Linda’s lovers who John later tried to kill). This reminds me of a book I read last year that was also a dystopia in which it's totalitarian government understood the power that words and books can have over people, and so they banned books from society. Fahrenheit 451 is, ironically, narrated from the guy who makes sure that books are being burnt and that no one reads them, while he steals and keeps books hidden. I guess that words can give people a sense of independence and thinking into some sort of rebellion or revolution, which is exactly what the government avoids in Fahrenheit 451.

Plot Twist?

I have read a fair share of books in my life, not as many as I would like, but I still consider myself to read a lot. The thing with books, the good ones at least, is that they are unexpected. And so, the plot twist of this week is *drumroll*: a World Controller got a woman pregnant and left her in a reserve full of “savages”, more than an ocean away from the civilized world. Which doesn’t seem like a big deal but, believe me, it is. Aside from that, the book has been pretty good. I now know who the protagonists of the story are and what their general idea of life is. Also, I am pretty curious of what could happen if John and Linda are able to go back to the “civilized” world. Honestly, I’m just imagining everything that can go wrong.