Postby Roy Hunter » Tue Oct 19, 2010 5:40 am
10: Never read it.
9: Read it, but didn't particularly like it. Not on ethical or moral grounds, it just didn't float my boat.
8: Read them to my nieces & nephews since my own brat was reading independently by then. Great books.
7: Read it at university when we were looking at the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
6: Read it at school, it was the book that was set for the class.
5: Read it at school, read it since then, will no doubt read it again.
4: Never read it.
3: Read it at school, read it since then, will no doubt read it again.
2: Read it at school, read it since then, will no doubt read it again.
1: Read it at school, read it since then, will no doubt read it again.
I find it hard to believe that you can seriously raise an objection to Brave New World: it is a brilliant allegory that was ahead of its time (published in the 1930s, but it describes a superficial and self-obsessed society that could easily have been the 1970s or 80s). John Savage is a rigidly moral character adrift in all of this, and he hates it. What is the problem with that? Unless it is the fact that, as a child he was raised by native Americans, and you can't have them being portrayed as morally superior to white people?
So, bearing in mind the Bible has people in it worshipping a golden calf, men offering women for sexual violence (Lot's daughters), marital infidelity (Onan and his brother's wife), devils, witches, seven-headed monsters, etc, shouldn't we try to get the Bible banned? It's a genuinely nasty book. Far worse things have been done by people after reading the Bible than after reading A Clockwork Orange.