A little bit of literature

“The Savage shook his head. ‘It all seems to me quite horrible.’

‘Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour* of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.’

‘I suppose not,’ said the Savage after a silence. ‘But need it be quite so bad as those twins?’ He passed his hand over his eyes as though he were trying to wipe away the remembered image of those long rows of identical midgets at the assembling tables, those queued-up twin-herds at the entrance to the Brentford monorail station, those human maggots swarming round Linda's bed of death, the endlessly repeated face of his assailants. He looked at his bandaged left hand and shuddered. ‘Horrible!’”

* glamour is written in British English. The American English of this noun is glamor.

Vocabulary build-up

In this context, overthrow is a noun, which means “an instance of overthrowing, especially one that results in downfall or destruction.” The verb overthrow means “to bring about the downfall, destruction, or ending of, especially by force or concerted action.”

The verb swarm means “to move or emerge in a swarm; to move or gather in large numbers; to congregate, move about or proceed in large numbers.”

Comments

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) was an English novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence whose works are notable for their wit and pessimistic satire. He remains best known for his masterpiece novel, “Brave New World” (1932), a model for much dystopian science fiction that followed. After graduating from Balliol College, Oxford, and working as a journalist for two years, Huxley devoted himself largely to his own writing and spent much of his time in Italy until the late 1930s, when he settled in California. A curious fact is that he spent some time at Garsington Manor, the home of socialite Lady Ottoline Morrell and a gathering place for intellectuals and writers such as Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, with whom Huxley would develop a lasting friendship. In 1932, after a few books were published, “Brave New World'' came out and marked a turning point in Huxley’s career. Despite being a fundamentally satiric novel, as his previous works, the dystopian story also vividly expresses Huxley’s distrust of 20th-century trends in both politics and technology. The novel presents a nightmarish vision of a future society in which psychological conditioning forms the basis for a scientifically determined and immutable caste system that, in turn, obliterates the individual and grants all control to the World State. Set in London in 2540, the 7th century After Ford, Brave New World presents a future in which genetically engineered babies are produced on assembly lines, the social and economic divide between the haves and the have nots is legally enforced and discontent is quelled by advertising, medication, sex and entertainment. The novel proved to be a massive critical and commercial success, cementing Huxley’s place as one of the most important writers of the era.