Yes, Brave New World Is Banned!

Brave New World presents a future where humanity has been engineered for stability at the cost of everything that makes life meaningful. Citizens are decanted from artificial wombs, conditioned from birth to accept their assigned caste, and kept compliant with a euphoric drug called soma and a culture of mandatory promiscuity. When Bernard Marx, a misfit Alpha, brings a “savage” named John from a reservation into this sterile paradise, the collision between natural human feeling and manufactured happiness exposes the horror beneath the World State’s glossy surface. Huxley’s 1932 novel has proven even more prophetic than Orwell’s 1984 in predicting how societies might surrender freedom willingly for pleasure rather than under coercion.

Brave New World has been challenged for nearly a century, making it one of the longest-banned books in American history. Objections range from its depictions of promiscuous sexuality and drug use to its perceived anti-religion and anti-family themes. With over 150 total challenges, it has been removed from school libraries and curricula in Texas, Florida, Iowa, Utah, and Missouri. Some challengers have objected to its depiction of a caste system as racist, while others find its sexual content inappropriate for students, despite the novel’s clear condemnation of the very hedonism it depicts.