Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 조작되고 통제된 가짜 행복을 거부한다

 

과학기술의 발달로 만들어진 전체주의 사회, 미래의 디스토피아를 그려낸 헉슬리의 1931년작, 멋진 신세계. 100년 가까이 전에 쓰여졌다는 게 믿기지 않을 정도로 요즘 영화화된 소설들만큼이나 스토리가 설득력 있다. 미래 통제 계급 사회의 디스토피아적 속성을 그려냈다. 존과 총통의 마지막 대화가 책의 메시지를 잘 드러낸다.

 

“We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn’t fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas—that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!”

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is.”

“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence.

“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.”