The Nine Years War destroyed the world and the society that arose from its burning ashes set out to completely redesign it to eliminate conflicts and social upheavals. Thus, the ideal society was born. Now everyone comes from test tube bottles, everything is conditioned, and life is perfect. People are born into a class and remain there their entire life. They are physically and psychologically trained to fit in one set of thoughts peculiar to their class, and they live their lives without much thinking. All except for the Alphas, who run the society and who have been given more latitude to enjoy live, within a certain set of parameters.
Bernard Marx is one of these Alphas, but he does not feel comfortable in his own society. Plagued with self-doubt and a misfit among other Alphas, Bernard decides to step out of his comfort zone and makes a date with Lenina, a woman he works with. They vacation to New Mexico, where they partake of one of the last remaining zones where humans live their lives in ways similar to those of before the Nine Years War.
There Bernard and Lenina meet John, who was born of a woman from their own society. It turns out that Linda was abandoned by the current Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, one of Bernard’s rivals. Seeing the opportunity to humiliate the Director, Bernard returns to London with John and his mother. As a man born from a woman, John becomes the sensation of this civilized society, but at what cost?
A critique of fascism and authoritarian societies, Brave New World continues to fascinate decades after its first printing and presents an excellent dystopian view of the imperfections of a “perfect” society.
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