Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a fictional book dealing with the ethics of a utopia and whether or not happiness is worth it if built on the backbone of others' suffering. The book mainly follows one person who goes onto a reservation where they end up bringing one person back to the utopia. They book then dives into the two perspectives of the savage and the utopian society.
This book seems rather overlooked as it contains no big or action packed narrative. It is for this reason however that this book is such a great science fiction novel. It really captures the best parts of the genre, where in this utopian society it is shown that life is perfect, yet is it worth the suffering of others. Without spoiling too much of the ending, the latter half of the book turns into a long ethics debate, about is suffering truly suffering if people are oblivious to know any better. Both Brave New World and 1984 both present a dystopia, but in very different ways. The society in this book is not a dystopia because of a totalitarian government, but because the cost of perfection is lack of meaning. If there is no goal to reach for, what is the meaning for living?
In real life, with technology constantly advancing, we have an idealized future where there are no problems. We run the risk of becoming this same society we see in Brave New World. Of course I strongly doubt this, with the increasing tensions around the world right now, if anything we would collapse into the society from 1984. What I’m left with is the question, is struggle a part of being human? I would say yes, however then again that is exactly the point of this book, meaning this is up for you to decide after reading.
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