Island is a 1962 utopian manifesto and novel by English writer Aldous Huxley, the author's final work before his death in 1963. Although it has a plot, the plot largely serves to further conceptual explorations rather than setting up and resolving conventional narrative tension.
It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World. The ideas that would become Island can be seen in a foreword he wrote in 1946 to a new edition of Brave New World:
If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the Utopian and primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity... In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque and co-operative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle—the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"
Contents
Plot summary
Englishman William Asquith "Will" Farnaby deliberately wrecks his boat on the shores of the Kingdom of Pala, an island halfway between Sumatra and the Andaman Islands, thus forcing his entry to this otherwise "forbidden island". Farnaby, a journalist, political huckster, and lackey for the oil baron Lord Joseph "Joe" Aldehyde, is tasked with persuading the island's current queen—the Rani—to sell Aldehyde rights to Pala's untapped oil assets. Farnaby awakens on the island with a leg injury, hearing a myna bird screaming "Attention", when a local boy and girl notice him and take him for medical treatment to their grandfather, Dr. Robert MacPhail. Dr. Robert and a young man named Murugan Mailendra carry Farnaby to Robert's house for a surprisingly successful hypnotherapy session led by Susila, Robert's daughter-in-law and the mother of the two children. Susila's husband Dugald (Robert's son) recently died in a climbing accident, and Susila is still grappling with the grief.
Farnaby and Murugan recognise each other from a recent meeting with Colonel Dipa, the military dictator of a threatening country called Rendang-Lobo that neighbours Pala—another force coveting Pala's oil. In private, Murugan reveals to Farnaby that he is in fact the Rani's son and will be assuming control over Pala in a few days as its new Raja. Both the Rani and Murugan were raised outside of Palanese culture, however, and so both are largely westernised, with Murugan especially influenced by materialism and consumerist greed. Contrary to these philosophies, most Palanese islanders engage in peaceful living, intellectual pursuits, and deep spiritualism that avoids superstition. The kingdom has no military and its inhabitants have cultivated a nearly utopian society by blending the most applicable elements from western science and eastern Mahayana Buddhism, also adopting a multiple-parents child-rearing strategy of mutual adoption clubs (MACs), as well as a bilingual culture of English and Palanese. Palanese citizens strive to live always in the moment, to directly confront suffering and death, to meditate often, to engage shamelessly in coitus reservatus called maithuna, and to use moksha-medicine—a local psychedelic drug or entheogen—to help achieve these other goals. The Rani, however, who comes to visit Farnaby and is theatrical, larger-than-life, and more traditionally religious, is disgusted by these mainstream Palanese values and wishes to reform the country. Farnaby convinces her that Joe Aldehyde's oil money will help her in her quest to "save" the nation from blasphemy.
As he recuperates, Farnaby reads Dr. Robert's copy of the Old Raja's Notes on What's What, and What It Might be Reasonable to do about What's What, which outlines Palanese practical philosophies for self-improvement and self-actualisation. He then tours the island's educational system, which merges the sciences, the arts, and self-control techniques with the personal search for spiritual self-fulfillment. Dr. Robert recounts the island's history, including how his own Scottish grandfather, Dr. Andrew MacPhail, was called to the island over a century ago to treat the Old Raja's facial tumour using both trance-based mesmerization and actual surgery; this first brought scientific practices and the English language into Palanese culture.
Major themes
Island explores many of the themes and ideas that interested Huxley in the post-World War II decades and were the subject of many of his nonfiction books of essays, including Brave New World Revisited, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, The Doors of Perception, and The Perennial Philosophy. Some of these themes and ideas include overpopulation, ecology, modernity, democracy, mysticism, entheogens, and somatotypes.
In an interview with Ron Martinetti of American Legends website, Laura Huxley called Island "the finest and final work." In Laura's opinion, "He put everything in that. Brave New World was a warning and Island was an offering."
Common background elements occur in both Island and Brave New World; they were used for good in the former and for ill in the latter. Such elements include:
Huxley's mother Julia Huxley died when he was ten and she was 46. She wrote a letter to Aldous as she was dying and he carried this with him for the rest of his life. It included the thought "Judge not too much and love more". Scholars of Aldous's works see his mother's death in his cynical attitude and his books including Brave New World and the utopian Island.
The culture of Pala is the offspring of a Scottish secular humanist medical doctor, who made a medical visit to the island in the 19th century and decided to stay and work with its Raja, who embodies the island's Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to create a society that merges the best of East and West. The Old Raja's treatise, Notes on What's What, is a book within the book that explains Pala's philosophical foundations.
A central element of Palanese society is restrained industrialisation, undertaken with the goal of providing fulfilling work and time for leisure and contemplation. For the Palanese, progress means a selective attitude towards technology, which Huxley contrasts to the underdeveloped poverty of the neighbouring island of Rendang, and with the alienating overdevelopment of the industrialised West, chiefly through Will Farnaby's recollections of London. The Palanese embrace modern science and technology to improve medicine and nutrition, but have rejected widespread industrialisation. For example, hydroelectricity is made available for refrigeration, so that surplus fresh food can be stored, improving nutrition and protecting against food shortages. Huxley viewed this selective modernisation as essential for his "sane" society, even if it means that such a society is unable to militarily defend itself from its "insane" neighbours who wish to steal its natural resources.
References to Indian religions
The cosmic dance of Shiva (Nataraja)
The legend of Muchalinda
Buddha's Flower Sermon
Moksha
