How Did Bernard Marx Change In Brave New World

“If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely” (Huxley 137). In the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley the world has changed and is now divided into ten World States. People are hatching from test tubes and mature at an accelerated rate to cut out the wasteful years of a child’s life. Everyone is assigned to castes before they are brought into the World State, with each one becoming more and more intelligent as you move up. The lowest, Epsilons, are basically mindless bodies for menial labor and the highest, Alphas, controlling the society. Next we meet two men who are different from everyone else, Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson. These two men eventually meet John the Savage, a man of viperous birth, and they introduce him to the World

State. John rejects it for its lack meaning they place in life, which leads to John meeting Mustapha Mond, another unorthodox man. It is after John talks with Mond that Mustapha allows John to live on the outskirts of the World State but still close enough for Mustapha to keep an eye on John. Eventually John is pushed to suicide because he cannot live with the way that the World State is run. In Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World, Bernard Marx, Mustapha Mond, and John the Savage are clearly unorthodox.
Bernard Marx is a man growing up with no respect from anyone else.

Part of this is because Bernard Marx is an Alpha Plus that has the physical stature of a Gamma. This causes him to resent the World State for what it has done to him. This is also the source of his unorthodox thoughts. For example during his Solidarity Service days he says: “ ‘I hear him; He’s coming.’ But it wasn’t true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming” (Huxley 84). This was during the type of religious service that Bernard participated in for worshiping Ford. But the part that makes him different is that he does not actually believe in For like everyone else in the World State does, just one of his unorthodox thoughts. Another one occurs on his first date with Lenina: “But, Bernard, we shall be alone all night.’ Bernard blushed and looked away, ‘I meant, alone for talking,’ he mumbled. ‘Talking? But what about?’” (Huxley 89). In this instance Lenina wants to go golfing or do something fun, like normal people. But Bernard wants to just talk and get to know one and other. To Lenina and everyone else in the World State this seems strange, which is how it makes Bernard unorthodox. Bernard’s unorthodoxy stems from his physical disability of being abnormally short for his caste, causing him to be ridiculed and thought of as

different.
We are first introduced to Mustapha Mond at the beginning of the book where he first shows his unorthodoxy. Mustapha is the Resident Controller of Western Europe and the most powerful person in their World State. While the Director is giving a tour of the Decanting facility to some children, Mustapha stops by and interrupts the tour. He then tells them: “‘That’s why you’re taught no history,’ the Controller was saying, ‘But now the time has come . . .’ The D. H. C. look at him nervously. There were those strange rumors of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller’s study” (Huxley 35). We can see that Mond knows information that no one else knows and here it seems like he is going to share it with the children. Then the Director comments that he is worried that he is breaking the rules, even though Mustapha is the one that makes the rules, and this is where we see that his unorthodoxy with the amount of knowledge he has. Later in the book we learn that Mustapha was a scientist preforming questionable experiments before the time of the World State. He is then offered the chance to live on an island alone for the rest of his life, doing as he pleases but having no impact, or he can become a World Controller. Being a World Controller, Mustapha can bend the rules, for example: “The Savage’s face lit up with a sudden pleasure. ‘Have you read it too?’ he asked. ‘I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England.’ ‘Almost nobody. I’m one of the very few. It’s prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them’” (Huxley 218-219). Here it can be seen that Mustapha Mond has read some works of William Shakespeare, like John the Savage. Also as Mustapha says he can break his own rules and read although no one else can he is clearly unorthodox and different from everyone else in the World State, even the other unorthodox men of Watson and Marx. Unlike Bernard, Mustapha’s unorthodoxy arises from his intelligence not his physical stature.
John the Savage is a man very out of place in the World State.

He was raised in a land different than everyone else, the Reservation. Even while on the Reservation John is being treated different from the people of Malpais. When he is talking to Bernard and Lenina for the first time he says: “‘But they wouldn’t let me. They disliked me for my complexion. It’s always been like that’” (Huxley 117). Here it can be determined that the people of the Reservation do not take John in as one of their own because of the way he looks, this leads him to be an outcast among the Savages. This could be what allows John’s mom, Linda to teach give John a book on William Shakespeare and make him into what he is. Also towards the end of the book when Bernard and Watson are preparing to leave to their islands they come to say fair well to John when John says: “The Savage nodded. ‘I ate civilization.’ ‘What?’ ‘It poisoned me’” (Huxley 241). This is where John points out that he is feed up with the World State. Whether it was the soma that killed his mom, the way people do not have meaning for anything, or just the way the people of the World State live, he is done with it all. This is the best example of unorthodoxy in the book as it is a full rejection of the society by a character. John thinks this way of living is poisoning humanity and wants no part of it. Like a synthesis of both Marx and Mond, John’s comes from his physical appearance and his intellectual

values.
Throughout the book there are many characters that show signs of unorthodoxy and they arise from different sources, both physical and psychological. Both Bernard Marx and Mustapha Mond are able to live in some form a piece with their specific form of unorthodoxy, but in the end it is clear there is no place in the World State for John the Savage. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley shows many characters dealing with unorthodoxy.