Library / Emotional Suppression
Read this when
Brave New World
'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.' Huxley saw the pressure to always feel good coming in 1932.
Who it's for
The World State keeps everyone content with soma and constant distraction, and readers weigh for themselves what is lost when discomfort is never allowed; many readers today recognize their own habits of numbing in it.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's 1932 dystopian novel set in a future World State where people are engineered and conditioned into fixed castes and kept content with a pleasure drug called soma. Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne visit a Savage Reservation in New Mexico and meet John, an outsider raised there who has read Shakespeare.
Where to find it
In print (Harper Perennial / Vintage); widely available from libraries (Libby/Hoopla) and as an audiobook. Not public domain in the US (published 1932). Often assigned in schools.
Before you start
Heads up: Suicide and child sexualization.
Age: Ages 16+
In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XXXIV
