Brave New Meh.
Feb. 9th, 2011 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
devonmeyerThis post has two parts. The first part is how I didn't really care for this novel.
I mean, it was certainly interesting. It was a pleasurable read, and I was enticed to the end. But I didn't really take to it very well. Everyone in-class gave me this sense that BNW is this fantastic work of literary art unparalleled by any other, but I didn’t really find it to be all that exciting.
My largest complaint, by far, is the story. There was very little story to it. I mean who is the protagonist here—Bernard or the Savage? I severely dislike both of them, so I hope I’m wrong and I’m forgetting the real main guy here but I can’t, for the life of me, determine who it could be.
The story was lacking in a set protagonist as well as a substantial plot. Seriously, what happened? Nothing. A couple went to a savage reservation, picked up some guy who happens to have every work by Shakespeare memorized, and then the guy complains a lot and ends up killing himself. I mean it’s cool and all (I like Shakespeare as much as the next drama enthusiast), but that doesn’t make for a really substantial plot. Something’s got to happen, in my opinion. Something has got to try to oppress the Savage, and he must overcome.
That’s my final complaint: the Savage doesn’t overcome jack shit, he just instills in himself a sense of deprivation. In none of the stories that the Savage recounts does the person who suffers trials rejoice in the suffering of trials. The trials come because they have to come, and the person goes through it. It’s not like Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t choose to be able to grow up and marry each-other and live out their lives happily if they could; what makes the story riveting and their suffering beautiful is that they had to suffer, and willingly did. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have it any other way.
And this brings me to the second part of my post: what I’m thinking about for my essay.
I really want to write about the aforementioned wrongness of the Savage. He’s ridiculous. The beauty in self-sacrifice doesn’t come simply in self-sacrifice, it comes in attaching oneself to an ideal or a person despite the self-sacrifice that one will have to go through. I mean, I think the future of Huxley’s novel is a dystopia without question, but the solution isn’t in this engorged sense of the necessity of the deprivation of happiness that the Savage presumes.
I guess I’ll have to think a little bit more about the novel and about Freud and all that jazz because I still have no idea how to logically tie all of this together, but now that I have had the book shelved for a few days and am revisiting it, I must say that overall, I just didn’t love it. Yep.
I mean, it was certainly interesting. It was a pleasurable read, and I was enticed to the end. But I didn't really take to it very well. Everyone in-class gave me this sense that BNW is this fantastic work of literary art unparalleled by any other, but I didn’t really find it to be all that exciting.
My largest complaint, by far, is the story. There was very little story to it. I mean who is the protagonist here—Bernard or the Savage? I severely dislike both of them, so I hope I’m wrong and I’m forgetting the real main guy here but I can’t, for the life of me, determine who it could be.
The story was lacking in a set protagonist as well as a substantial plot. Seriously, what happened? Nothing. A couple went to a savage reservation, picked up some guy who happens to have every work by Shakespeare memorized, and then the guy complains a lot and ends up killing himself. I mean it’s cool and all (I like Shakespeare as much as the next drama enthusiast), but that doesn’t make for a really substantial plot. Something’s got to happen, in my opinion. Something has got to try to oppress the Savage, and he must overcome.
That’s my final complaint: the Savage doesn’t overcome jack shit, he just instills in himself a sense of deprivation. In none of the stories that the Savage recounts does the person who suffers trials rejoice in the suffering of trials. The trials come because they have to come, and the person goes through it. It’s not like Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t choose to be able to grow up and marry each-other and live out their lives happily if they could; what makes the story riveting and their suffering beautiful is that they had to suffer, and willingly did. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have it any other way.
And this brings me to the second part of my post: what I’m thinking about for my essay.
I really want to write about the aforementioned wrongness of the Savage. He’s ridiculous. The beauty in self-sacrifice doesn’t come simply in self-sacrifice, it comes in attaching oneself to an ideal or a person despite the self-sacrifice that one will have to go through. I mean, I think the future of Huxley’s novel is a dystopia without question, but the solution isn’t in this engorged sense of the necessity of the deprivation of happiness that the Savage presumes.
I guess I’ll have to think a little bit more about the novel and about Freud and all that jazz because I still have no idea how to logically tie all of this together, but now that I have had the book shelved for a few days and am revisiting it, I must say that overall, I just didn’t love it. Yep.
