Brave New World

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Fiction

            Huxley’s book Brave New World eerily predicts a future saturated in hedonism and disregard for higher thinking. The main character, Bernard Marx, finds himself at odds with this society and the book follows his conflict in a culture consumed with consumerism and brainwashed into submission. A key component of Huxley’s society is soma, a pill that citizens take when they feel unsettled or stressed. Through this pill, Huxley implicitly says that how we deal with our discomfort sets us apart. Our struggles push us to question and gain knowledge which lets us grow. Engaging with the unknown leads to emotional maturity, which is something that many of the characters in Huxley’s society lacked.

The Lowland

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Fiction

Lahiri’s novel, The Lowland follows four generations of one Indian family over time and distance and through personal turmoil and national conflict. The events in the characters’ personal lives mirror the historical context of the book.  Personal conflicts reflect the larger political conflict that India faced during the same time period and Lahiri juxtaposes the personal drama with the political and social turbulence of Indian and American society during the seventies.  It prods readers to examine their personal lives to find the key moments in their past that continues to affect them in the present. It also prompts the reader to consider how personal events are shaped by political events and the times in which they are lived.  The Lowland is a story of how our lives are shaped by our context, how history continues to shape the future, both on an individual and a societal level, and how personal history can continue to haunt one’s life because of the threads that tie the past to the present.