Brave New World

Kelly writes:
Brave New World

The novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley switches off from the perspectives of 5 people, Bernard Marx, Lenina Crowne, John the Savage, Helmholtz Watson, and The Director. The narrative third person omniscient and switches from one character to the next quite rapidly. Although there are 5 points of view, there are 3 main characters. The first main character is Bernard Marx, he lives in the new world, he is an Alpha Plus but has the physique of a Gamma which makes him very self conscious, and he is very shy and depressed. He is very fond of Lenina Crowne, anther main character, Lenina is a Beta who is very pretty and unorthodox by the standards of the new world. She dated the same man for four months when most date more than one person at a time, she also is attracted to Bernard even though he is seen as a misfit, she is however still very in sync with the world, she loves soma and throughout the novel she repeats the sayings they teach you when you are young. The last main character is John the Savage. He lived in the savage reservation all his life with his mom, Linda who lived in the new world until she got lost in there when she went there with her love at the time, the director. John is shunned by the savage society because of his mothers ways and was taught how to read and speak English by his mother, and has read the complete works of Shakespeare, something that does not exist in the new world. Bernard and Lenina go to the savage reservation together on a trip and discover John and decide to bring him back to the new world. Bernard becomes popular for discovering the savage and is happy and very boastful at this point in the book. John really likes Lenina and Lenina likes him but there is no love in the new world so Lenina can’t have the same feelings as her and this is causing a conflict between them. There is no definite antagonist in the book so far, it seems as the new system overall is the antagonist seeing as mostly everyone is happy besides the few people that don’t fit in such as Bernard, John, and Helmhotz who is Bernard’s friend that is extremely bright but isn’t able to use his abilities. When Bernard brings back John and his mother Linda to the new world and introduces them to the director, John tells him that he is his father, a thing so obscene to say that the director retires from his position, in the new world there is no mothers and fathers and women don’t actually give birth. Linda who was really only around 45 years old was said to look like a zombie, very old and bloated because in the new world everyone looks no older than 3o and dies at a fairly young age so natural aging disgusts them, this shows the reader that people in the new world have been so conditioned that they can’t even conceive of anything less than perfect.