Aldous Huxley is… an interesting author to say the least. Some of you may have heard of him because of his novel Brave New World that details a dystopian society full of designer babies and a drug that sedates the population. I wouldn’t say he is a great story-teller since his books tend to be heavier on philosophy and his personal views of the world, but that’s what keeps me coming back to him every time. For more elaborate showcases of what he believes in I recommend checking out both The Perennial Philosophy and Island.

Out of all of Huxley’s books that I have read, however, Eyeless in Gaza was by far the most difficult to follow. Despite it being his most personal novel (or maybe because of it), I was struggling to get through the first half of the book. For one, the story jumps back and forth between different points in time and spans a period of about 30 years. As if trying to get all of the storylines and characters straight was not difficult enough, it was interspersed with discontinuous chunks of his ideology that don’t fully make sense until the end of the novel. And, to top all of that off, the book was written in 1936… What the heck is Pickwickian? Bouvard et Pécuchet? De Reszke Aristocrat? Literary and colloquial phrases in at least 3 different languages and historical allusions to I-have-no-idea-what are casually sprinkled throughout the book. Yes I know I could have looked them all up to fully understand, but who has the time for that?

The story itself is about an intellectual Oxford graduate named Anthony Beavis, who loves tinkering with theories about social relations but doesn’t enjoy actually engaging in them. Picture Simon Cowell with thick-framed glasses picking on middle-aged housewives instead of starry-eyed teenagers.  He’s a bit cynical, and has a tendency to  feel superior because of the nature of his career. Instead of personally engaging in his own life, he sees greater value in dissecting it purely through the lens of a detached observer who is subject to the whims of circumstance.

“‘All that howling and hurrahing and gnashing of teeth. About the adventures of a self that isn’t really a self – just the result of a lot of accidents. And of course,’ he went on, ‘once you start wondering, you see at once that there is no reason for making such a fuss. And then you don’t make a fuss – that is, if you’re sensible. Like me,’ he added, smiling.”

At the risk of disclosing too much about the book’s plot, I’ll just say that this view of the world does not work out too well for him. Based on my personal experience, it seemed as if he was searching for freedom through his scholarly endeavors. Freedom from responsibility, freedom from personal relations, and freedom from the torment of decision making that people normally have to struggle with. Society tends to hold scholars in high esteem (even though our political system says otherwise), so he felt that he was justified in living above his own personal problems. He did whatever made life easier for him, even if it was against generally accepted ideas of what he should do.

He was extremely good at rationalizing his reasons for not personally engaging in his own life, but he eventually realizes that he couldn’t rise above (or run away from) his own problems. Towards the end of the book he continuously finds himself trapped in tough situations because of his previous indecision.

“‘The trouble,’ said Anthony, frowning to himself, ‘the trouble is that I’ve always been a coward. A moral one, certainly. Perhaps also a physical one – I don’t know. I’ve never really had an opportunity of finding out.’”

Dealing with personal problems certainly takes courage, and running away from them is always an easy solution. Fortunately, no matter how we choose to cover them up or justify our own self importance, they always come back somehow. I say fortunately because I choose to see them as calls to action; kind of like the hero’s journey most of us learned about in school. Even though I might feel insignificant in terms of the big picture, it’s pretty fun seeing myself as a hero battling my inner demons and coming home different than I was when I started. Only by diving into the storm and personally experiencing our need for change can we actually deal with our problems that seemed impossible at first.

“Any process of change is a lifetime’s job. Every time you get to the top of a peak, you see another peak in front of you – a peak that you couldn’t see from lower down… The ideal ends recede as you approach them; they’re seen to be other and more remarkable than they seemed before the advance was begun. It’s the same when one tries to change one’s relations with other people. Every step forward reveals the necessity of making new steps forward – unanticipated steps, towards a destination one hadn’t seen when one set out. Yes, it lasts a lifetime.”

Anthony Beavis lived most of his life stuck with a mindset that ensured his own misery. Even if he didn’t realize it at first, his viewpoint determined his interactions with the world, which eventually trapped him instead of giving him the freedom he desired. Only by personally experiencing the effect his views had on him was he open to understanding his own need for change and liberating himself from his old problems.