Ape and Essence

"Ape and Essence" (1948) is a novel by Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus the UK and Harper & Row in the US. It is set in a dystopia, similar to "Brave New World", Huxley's more famous work. It is largely a satire of the rise of large-scale warfare and warmongering in the 20th century, and presents a pessimistic view of the politics of mutually assured destruction. The book makes extensive use of surrealist imagery, depicting humans as apes who, as a whole, will inevitably commit suicide.

Plot summary

The book starts off in Hollywood with two movie producers who rescue a script from the trash. They are intrigued, and drive to Los Angeles County's high desert to find its author. They arrive at a remote and isolated old ranch, a solitary homestead in a surreal setting. (Huxley's evocative prose is actually an exact description of his own desert home, where he sits, writing.) They interact with the home's inhabitants, learning that the script's author died suddenly, six weeks ago. The rest of the book is the rescued screenplay "Ape and Essence", written in the first person, and presented in its entirety, without remark.

The script begins with a vignette describing the destruction of the world by nuclear and chemical warfare at the hands of intelligent baboons - a critique of the human race (see more about these vignettes below). The two warring sides each have an Einstein on a leash which they force to press the button, releasing clouds of disease-causing gases toward each other.

The story then advances to a time 100 years after the catastrophic events of World War III, which characters in the book refer to as "the thing", when nuclear and chemical weapons eventually destroyed most of human civilization. In the script's timeframe, radiation has subsided to safer levels and the New Zealand rediscovery scientists (New Zealand being spared from the bombings because it was "of no strategic importance") are sailing to California.

Unfortunately, a strange society has emerged from the radiation and two of its men capture one of the scientists (Dr. Poole). Dr. Poole is introduced to an illiterate society which survives by "mining" graves for clothes, burning library books as fuel, and killing off newborns deformed by radiation (that is, newborns with over 3 pairs of nipples and more than 7 toes/fingers per hand) to preserve genetic purity. The society has also taken to worshipping Satan, whom they refer to as Belial, and limiting reproduction to an annual two-week orgy which begins on "Belial's Day Eve" after the deformed babies are "purified by blood."

The book climaxes during the purification ceremonies of Belial's Day Eve with an intellectual confrontation between Dr. Poole and the Arch Vicar, the head of the Church of Belial (much like the confrontation John the Savage has with Mustapha Mond in "Brave New World"). During the conversation the Arch Vicar reveals that there is a minority of "hots" who do not express an interest in the post-WWIII style of reproduction, but they are severely punished to keep them in line. In exchange for his life, Dr. Poole agrees to do what he can as a botanist to help increase their crops yields, but about a year later he escapes with Loola in search of the community of "hots" that is rumored to exist North of the desert.

The book ends with Dr. Poole and Loola picnicking in the desert by a tombstone which carries the name of the author who wrote the script. Dr. Poole reads a poem (see below) to Loola and crushes an eggshell and sprinkles it over the grave.

The poem he reads to Loola:

That Light whose smile kindles the Universe That Beauty in which all things work and move That Benediction, which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love, Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. --Percy Bysshe Shelley, (an excerpt from Adonais)

Vignettes

The story in the script is punctuated by a series of vignettes centering around a society which is much like 20th century human society, but with baboons substituted for men. These brief scenes serve to further satirize human society and depict it as brutal, warlike, and stupid. The opening scene shows two Einsteins, tied to leashes held by baboons on either side of a pair of baboon armies, facing each other and preparing for battle. They are then directed to operate machines which release "improved" disease-causing clouds at the opposition. This scene expresses the belief that society's most intelligent figures are exploited by ignorant warmongers, and the hopelessness of a society in which every party seeks to annihilate all others.

Several of the vignettes portray a female baboon singing sensually to an all-baboon audience "Give me, give me, give me detumescence..." Other vignettes involve apes performing various human activities, ape armies assembling, and other more surreal imagery.

External links

* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0929587782 "Ape and Essence" at Amazon.com]
* [http://www.legendsmagazine.net/107/ape.htm "Legend Magazine" Review]