A Brave New World or The Handmaid's Tale

It's good to see some of you picking up Brave New World. In many ways, it is the text that bears most similarities with 1984. The other text i would like you to read is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Let me list some of the pros and cons of doing either as our fourth text next year.

Brave New World (1932), Aldous Huxley.
I think Marilyn provided a thoughtful commentary-comparision between 1984 and this text. Huxley himself, in an essay entitled "Brave New World Revisited" (1958) commented on the differences between his "fable" and Orwell's. He noted that his story focused on control exerted in a "soft" way compared with the more direct and brutal dominance of the Oceanic Party. The main emphasis of Brave New World is technology - how can technology help us build utopia? How might it ruin our utopia? BNW also allows us to make very interesting and relevant comparisons with DADoES, what with the use of Soma (drugs) and the creation of genetically-engineered classes of people. One more interesting fact - the novel makes mention of Singapore as one of the most productive genetic engineering stations! As a literary text, however, I don't think it rates very highly - again, like 1984, a crude plot and a brusque narrative style.

The Handmaid's Tale (1986), Margaret Atwood.
Set in the future where human fertility is reduced by environmental degradation to a dangerously low level, America is transformed into a religously fundamental state, run by "Commanders" and "Aunts", where the prime role of the few fertile women left is to act as surrogate mothers for these commanders, moving from household to household. This would be an interesting text because Atwood was very influenced and affected by 1984, so many issues are carried over and transformed in hers. It also allows us to look at utopian writings from a more feminist perspective, something direly lacking in this genre. Personally, I really like Atwood's style of writing - it borders on the poetic (tho' occasionally it also threatens to flip over to the banal). Of all the utopian texts i've read, this one has one of the highest literary value (play of words, explores issue of writing and reading, poetic use of language, plays with perspectives, etc.). I must warn you however, that the text deals a lot with issues of sexuality (it's as if Atwood wrote a novel about Julia... a more sophisticated and human version...) which i hope will not overly repulse or excite some of you.

So, i think these are the two most likely candidates for next year's fourth text. Do your reading now, if you can, and we'll talk about this when we meet in Jan '05 (which is just a couple of weeks away *gasp*)!