As I mentioned in yesterday's post on Russian writer, Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian classic, We , George Orwell had once claimed that Brave New World. was derived from Zamyatin's novel. Huxley denied this, saying he had never known about the novel until after the publication of Brave New World. I wrote yesterday that I sided with Huxley on this, and now having just finished re-reading We, Brave New World , and 1984 , I am convinced that it is Orwell's novel that is derived from Zamyatin's novel.
I suppose it's only natural to compare Huxley's classic with Orwell. 1984 is, to me, the more frightening of the two and has the potential of becoming an accurate picture of society. I don't think we're quite there, yet.
Brave New World is disturbing in it's own way, and is closer to an actual portrait of society today. I can see Planned Parenthood's eugenics program in the novel. The, so-called, elites of today have managed to manipulate the "lower classes" thru sex without consequences and the legalization of drugs.
I am puzzled by one particular theme in Huxley's novel.
In the novel, children are not created thru normal sexual activity. Babies are mass produced thru a type of artificial insemination. Huxley was unaware of the concept of cloning at the time; cloning would fit well with the novel. Following a eugenics program, embryos are manipulated to create a set amount of Alpha individuals, Beta, Delta, and on down to moronic Epsilons. Most individuals are sterilized and unable to reproduce sexually, although for reasons which are clear to me, some individuals did not undergo sterilization, but are conditioned not to want to reproduce and are given contraceptives. All individuals are encourage to engage in sexual intercourse with anyone and everyone.
Two high caste individuals, one male and one female are permitted to vacation in an uncivilized Indian reservation in New Mexico, where life goes on as it has for centuries. While there, the woman, Linda somehow gets separated from the man. She becomes hopelessly lost and given up for dead. As it turns out, she survives but because she had made some sort of mistake with the contraceptive program, she becomes pregnant by her Alpha lover.
It is her child who is finally discovered and with her, brought back to civilization. Now here is the part that is puzzling to me. While living among the "savages", Linda continues her "civilized" habit of promiscuous sex with several men on the reservation. Although using contraceptives while having sex with her Alpha partner, she accidentally gets pregnant, yet she manages to not get pregnant again while having "unprotected" sex with numerous partners over what is probably a 20 year period.
That problem seems to have escaped Huxley, and he doesn't address it.
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