Challenged and Banned: Huxley's Brave New World

Challenged/Banned Info:

• In 1980, Brave New World was removed from classrooms in Miller, Missouri among other challenges. (1980)
• In 1993, an attempt was made to remove this novel from a California school’s required reading list because it “centered around negative activity”. (1993)
• Challenged at the Yukon, Okla. High School. (1988)
• Removed from Foley (Ala.) High School Library after parent complaint. (2000)
• Frequently challenged for themes of sexuality, drugs, and suicide.

Huxley’s 1931 novel remains a stark and at many times frightening vision of a future where “better living through science” has been taken a step or two too far. In Brave New World Huxley imagines his Utopian World State, a place where people live without the threat of violence, poverty, or hunger. And yet, everyone must consume chemicals to stave off depression, children are born in laboratories and trained to embrace societies caste system, and movies have been replaced with “feelies,” or movies that significantly stimulate the senses, and Henry Ford is revered as God. So, as you can see, all is not well. World State might glitter, but it isn’t gold.

There are several characters to pay attention to, but the three big ones are Bernard Marx, an antisocial man destined to fall in love with himself, Lenina, who is the object of Bernard’s affections and a social misfit in the World State society, and John, who has lived a hard life and knows how to read, a fact that causes others to scorn him for stepping outside of his caste restrictions, and whom will also fall in love with Lenina. Things are going to get really messed up over the course of the novel and, sorry to say, the ending bears a similar tone to George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Which is to say, don’t expect a really happy outcome.

More after the jump…