Sep 4, 2008

Brave New World | The Unique Setting of Huxley's Novel

In this essay, Jhan Hochman provides an overview of the unique
setting Huxley constructed for his novel and how
the work is an argument for individualism.

Aldous Huxley’s most enduring and prophetic work, Brave New World (1932), describes a future world in the year 2495, a society combining intensified aspects of industrial communism and capitalism into a horrifying new world order. Huxley’s title, taken from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, is therefore ironic: This fictional dystopia is neither brave nor new. Instead, it is so controlled and safe that there is neither need nor opportunity for bravery. As for being “new,” its unrelenting drives toward management and development, and its obsessions with predictable...