May the Ford be with you.

(spoilers to follow, consider yourself warned)

Imagine yourself in a world where a caste system is genetically imposed, it is not at all uncommon for you to have a whole slew of people with the exact same face as you, you're allowed and encouraged to be promiscuous (with protection, of course), the movies stimulate all five of your senses, in addition to evoking other feelings, and there are tablets that give you all the happy lovely feelings of being drunk without all the unhappy anti-societal side effects.

Sounds perfect, right? Who wouldn't want to live there?

You would, if you hadn't been born there. Like John ("the Savage"), you would be surprised and likely repulsed by the fact that the word "mother" is equivalent to the worst swear word, that it is as if Shakespeare, the Bible (and thus, Jesus and God), art , and history never existed. There are no comedies or tragedies, because there is no longing, marriage, lust (except for once a month, a scheduled process for the good of the individuals), and, and most importantly, there is no sadness. All of this is strictly anti-social: against the society. Everything is done for the good of society.

DEFINITE SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT.

Overall, I liked the book quite a bit, except for one thing: the moral it seems to exude. The basis of the problem begins in the next-to-last chapter, where John (the "Savage") is talking to his Fordship the Controller (kind of like Big Brother + the president), named Mustapha Mond. The conversation goes like this:

"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something in that?" he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. "Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?"

"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time."

"What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.

"It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory."

"V.P.S.?"

"Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenalin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences."

"But I like the inconveniences."

"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

And here I found myself rooting for the Savage. He wants to be unhappy because it means he can have God and love and freedom and beautiful things. Of course, he couldn't have all of these things and stay in the society; that was just downright dangerous! But Mustapha Mond isn't completely bad. He lets the Savage pick where he is going to live, and he picks a small abandoned air-lighthouse (for planes, not boats) where he goes to plant food and read and torture the poisons of society out of himself. The society, however, cannot stay away (something that I am puzzled his Fordship allowed) and in the end they seem to drive him absolutely crazy, for he can't escape them. The last bit of the book goes:

That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing across the Hog's Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. The description of last night's orgy of atonement had been in all the papers.

"Savage!" called the first arrivals, as they alighted from their machine. "Mr. Savage!" There was no answer. The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet. "Mr. Savage!" Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east. …

And just like that, the savage is gone. And I, as the reader, am left with two conclusions. The first is that he died because he wanted suffering, because he wanted beauty and pain and God. That he died because he was not a part of the society, that this is what he gets for acting out and not taking soma. The second conclusion is that the society killed him. That they pursued him relentlessly and poisoned his soul until he hung himself. Either one I'm not happy with, to be honest.

Overall: I liked the book, didn't like the ending. Perhaps upon rereading I will like it better. I would suggest it to anyone though..... Although if you read this far the end is totally spoiled.