The Poignant Prophet By Aldous Huxley - 1680 Words

The Poignant Prophet One could say that Aldous Huxley was born into greatness, or one could also say that his greatness was forged from his experiences. Neither would be wrong. Huxley was a third son born in 1894, into a family that was distinguished on both sides. He was able to attend paid public school and later attended Eton. Huxley suffered three great traumas that affected his life deeply. The first would be the death of his beloved mother in 1908; he would later express this experience in a near autobiographic novel Eyeless in Gaza in 1936. â€Å"In a final letter to her son written on her deathbed, she told him, ‘Don t be too critical of people and love much’. Huxley later added in 1915, ‘†¦ I have come to see more and more how wise that advice was. It s her warning against a rather conceited and selfish fault of my own and it s a whole philosophy of life’† (Garret). In 1911, Huxley contracted keratitis punctata, causing blindness for nearly 18 months resulting in poor vision for the rest of his life. In that time he learned to read braille and gave up his plan to become a doctor due to his poor vision and he instead planned to become a writer. The third and final traumatic experience would be the suicide of his older brother Trevenen who had comforted him during his temporary blindness. The factors that may have attributed to the suicide may have been his failure to achieve honors at Oxford University and a love affair with a woman of a differing social class. In