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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page essay on Huxley's last novel. In his last major work, Island, A Novel (1962), Aldous Huxley purposefully combines Eastern and Western ideals to describe an island society that offers a possible template to the modern world for how to emerge from the dystopian culture of the mid-twentieth century. Ultimately, Huxley depicts his fictional scenario as unworkable because the forces of capitalism provide the proverbial "snake" in his Eden-like paradise of Pala. Nevertheless, Huxley's combining of Eastern mysticism with Western concepts is intriguing. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khhuismy.rtf
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the modern world for how to emerge from the dystopian culture of the mid-twentieth century. Ultimately, Huxley depicts his fictional scenario as unworkable because the forces of capitalism provide the
proverbial "snake" in his Eden-like paradise of Pala. Nevertheless, Huxleys combining of Eastern mysticism with Western concepts is intriguing. Huxley pictures the Palanese culture as beginning in the early
nineteenth century when the local Raja established a partnership with a Scottish physician, Dr. Andrew MacPhail. The descendents of the Raja and Dr. MacPhail work collectively to make their island
"the best of all the worlds--the words already realized within the various cultures and beyond them, and the worlds of still unrealized potentialities" (Huxley 130). Will Farnaby is the novels
protagonist. An employee of Southeast Asia Petroleum, he finds himself shipwrecked on this island. He asks to stay a month to study its culture and his interest is genuine,
but he also secretly plans to negotiate a lese for mineral rights between the Palanese and the petroleum company. He begins his exploration of the culture by reading Dr.
MacPhails notes, which describe the Palanese as Mahayanist Buddhists who are "shot through and through with Tantra" (Huxley 74). However, the first principle, which is "Nobody needs to go
anywhere else. We are all, if we already knew it, already there" (Huxley 35) displays a sharp Taoist influence. Looking at Huxleys life, his spirituality combined Eastern and Western
ideas early on, as his 1915 book of poetry, The Burning Wheel, is reminiscent of the Buddhist "wheel of becoming" (Paulsell 88). Huxley first outlined his "existential religion of
mysticism in The Perennial Philosophy (1945)," which is a combination of Buddhist principles and ideals that incorporates also Christian mystical tradition (Murray 35). These features are evident throughout Island.
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