Brave New World

[Jerry]

My grandson was assigned this reading in his British History class. I read it more than 50 years ago, but I re-read it to help discuss important parts that might be on a test.

 

My memory was faulty -- John the Savage ends up in Surrey, trying to be a hermit at an old lighthouse. My memory had put him back on the New Mexico Reservation, tormented by life among human beings whether savage or mindless worker units.

 

Many of the Shakespearean references were not noticed when I was a callow youth. This novel is rich with Elizabethan language and the jargon in the year of Our Ford, 632.

 

Naturally Huxley did not foresee the technical advances in cell phones and the Internet, but he correctly (IMHO) foresaw a vision of a certain kind of Utopia, with use of SOMA and sleep conditioning. Dictator suppression of individuality.

 

Oh, in the notes I learned that George Orwell had been in one of his classes in his earlier days. Great minds think alike.

 

Of course I remembered that he died on Nov. 22, 1963 after begging his wife for an injection of LSD.