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A Brief introduction to Brave New World
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In Brave New World, Huxley introduces multiple characters and problems to explore both internal and external conflicts throughout the story. One character we see in depth is Bernard. An alpha in society, Bernard struggles with inner conflict that separates him from the rest of his peers. Unlike others he sees the world he lives in as flawed. He questions everything and as a result of this, feels isolated and different. He struggles with his inner feelings as others start to judge him. He has the option to go against the part of him that says to act like every other Alpha, or to go with the part of him that wants to stand up for what he believes to be morally right. This said, we are introduces an external conflict; Bernard against the others in his caste. Most other alphas do not genuinely like Bernard. Strange to them, they disclude him and do not usually welcome his presence. The Director, after sharing personal information with Bernard, warns him of the dangers of resisting social norms. He even threatens to send him to Iceland if he does not start to conform. Because of all this, Bernard struggles between conforming to society like he is told, and his own personal beliefs. …show more content…
Another example of a character struggling with internal conflict is John.
At many times throughout the book, he is followed by an overpowering feeling of loneliness that follows him wherever he goes. At the Reservation, he is lonely because of the lack of people around him. No matter where he looks, he cannot find someone to spend the time with, or who seems to care. All this changes when he is brought into the World State. Here, he is surrounded by people that want to learn about and meet him. So unused to this feeling, this makes him feel painfully out of place. Where he used to suffer from being physically lonely, he is now experiencing emotional loneliness. Especially after the death of Linda, his mother, he feels able more alone than ever. This is what leads to his inevitable
downfall,. We also see John placed at the center of external conflict that also makes him feel alienated from society. His beliefs are those of a typical citizen in the Reservation. He was raised in a religion that worshipped God, and grew up learning about literature. However, people do not share these beliefs at the World State. They instead worship Henry Ford, and do not embrace literature like John does. Because of this, he tries to keep faith as he struggles to fit in, but ultimately fails to do so. The isolation from society becomes too much and he goes insane at the lighthouse, horrifyingly deciding his only option to escape the unhappiness is to commit suicide.
Bernard’s unconscious wish comes true after he brings John the Savage into the civilized world: He begins to be seen as an equal to the other alphas, and begins to “have” many women as everyone else does. Huxley describes, “success went fizzily to Bernard’s head, and in the process completely reconciled him...to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory” (Huxley 159). Through this section of the story, is is evident that Bernard becomes a hypocrite to those he once loathed who were high in power. This expression of pride in his behavior is proof that his hidden desires was to change the way things are by bringing in the savage, and also his desire to be equal to his peers. During the second half of the book, Bernard is no longer known as that one alpha who is physically stunted. Terry Cooper, author of the informative book, Sin, Pride, & Self-acceptance: The Problem of Identity in Theology & Psychology, wrote, “it is frequently pointed out that beneath the conceited behavior of many individuals is a haunting, self-doubting voice of inadequacy” (Cooper 149). Bernard’s sudden prideful attitude is rooted with his prior self contempt. Now that he knows what it’s like to be an equal after his experience of constant prejudice, pride takes control of his
In the beginning of Brave New World, Bernard is very easily relatable for a high school reader. He doesn’t fit in with everyone else and for this he is insecure. One reason he doesn’t fit in is because of his size. Many people look down on Bernard because of his physical handicap of being just 8 centimeters shorter than the normal alpha. For this, he gets picked on by the others. Huxley said this when describing Bernard, “The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone.” Many people can relate to feeling inadequate or being a little different than everyone else so they feel like they can relate to Bernard. Therefore, they hope for the best for Bernard. Everyone likes an underdog. Readers want to see Bernard succeed.
Bernard Marx was alienated in the Brave New World because of his general appearance. As an Alpha Plus, Bernard was unusually short and ugly. Suggested by Fanny, Bernard's condition resulted from an error when he was still in a bottle, the workers "thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol into his blood surrogate." Bernard did not fit in the structured order of the Brave New World and was therefore shunned by others. The error resulted in Bernard developing outside the barriers of his caste level. His ugliness and short stature led Bernard to become a perpetual outsider, alienated by society. As an outsider, Bernard was cynical of the order and structure of the Brave New World. He eschewed Electric Golf, and other social amusements in favor of loneliness and solidarity activities, such as, thinking. Bernard attempted to find a way "to be happy in some other way," in his own way, not the established way.
Every dystopia story has that one person that is special because they see thing differently when placed a world of adversity. Brave New World is a novel by Aldous Huxley which is set in the future and is meant to parody our current society by going to the extreme with certain aspect of society. The aspect of society are questioned by the character Bernard who is meant to be the person that goes against the social norms and the character the reader loves and roots for. However, Bernard does not fit the role of a character the readers can fall in love with because he has a sour personality, he’s hypocritical, and he’s superficial. I was not a fan of his character.
Bernard is different from most of the other citizens including the other Alphas. Alphas are supposed to be the height of the New World. They are created and conditioned to be the tallest, strongest, and smartest in the society. However, they are still conditioned and expected to act a certain way. Bernard hates the society he is in. He feels, “enslaved
...nly contemplate living as an alpha or beta because we cannot contemplate living without being able to formulate ideas or basically think. No one considers living as one of the lower castes and only working throughout life until death. Thus, it seems that Huxley intended to portray an acceptable society on the surface with undesirable traits hidden deeper. In conclusion, both of these novels portray an attractive life in a utopian society, if one can conform to the rules. When people cannot conform to the societies in which they dwell (as the main characters of both novels cannot) they are branded as subversives and punished as traitors. Life in 1984 would be almost too unbearable to live. Life in Brave New World is only acceptable if one is willing to live a life of the caste one is in, that is to produce (as a lower caste) or consume (as a higher caste).
Did you know that in 2014, shoplifting and worker’s theft cost the retail industry a loss of thirty-two billion dollars (Wahba, 2015)? According Wahba “a common misperception about shoplifting is that retailers can ‘afford’ the loss of a candy bar or a pair of jeans” (2015). This type of reasoning certainly does make more sense when explained through the context of a criminological theory. For example according to the Rational Choice theory individuals weigh the costs and benefits associated with a criminal and or deviant act and then make a conscious choice. Other criminological theories explain criminal and deviant behavior using a biological, psychological, social, conflict, or multifactor component. Taking that into consideration in this
Bernard Marx an Alpha plus specialist in sleep teaching is an example of a character that changes in the brave new word. He changes from a character that symbolized individuality to a character that just wanted to desperately belong to the society. At the beginning of the novel he seemed to be very different from the society, he acts like a rebel trying to battle against the order of things. He seemed to be an “individual” in the first few chapters. For example On his first date with Lenina with lenina he says ” I’d rather be myself. ‘Myself and nasty .Not somebody else, however jolly”(77). He wanted to be something else different from the rest of the society. However we see that his root concern is to be socially acceptable and not really about becoming an individual. In chapter 6 Bernard shows signs of undergoing a change in his character. When the Director summoned Bernard to his office for being unorthodox, Bernard goes on to brag to his friend Helmholtz Watson on his victory over the director when he says” I simply told him to go to the bottomless past and marched out of the room and that was that “(85). We get the sense that Bernard’s victory wasn’t so much about personal integrity as it was social acceptance. Finally, his character undergoes a c...
Huxley applies the above techniques to warn against the loss of meaning in a world of societal conformity. For the first movement of the novel, Bernard acts as an outsider who does not take pleasure in regular societal activities. After his first date with Lenina, Bernard longs for something missing from his life. “I want to know what passion is,” he says. “I want to feel something strongly” (Huxley 94). Huxley uses Bernard’s feelings at the beginning of Brave New World to expose a severe lack of meaning in Bernard’s own life. Huxley later shifts his focus to John the Savage to support his warning. In his climactic conflict with Mustapha Mond, John demands that things should come with more emotional cost in the World State society, arguing, “What you need is something with tears for a change” (Huxley 245). It is with this argument that Huxley confirms his warning: the loss of meaning in life. Mond says of society, “We don’t [like inconveniences]. We prefer to do things comfortably” (Huxley 246). But as John points out, an overemphasis on comfort leads to the sacrifice of responsibilities and hardships that make life meaningful. On the other hand, Vonnegut applies the same techniques to warn against the loss of purpose in an age of automation. Vonnegut’s vision of Ilium, New York, sees that automation has displaced thousands of citizens to menial jobs in construction or the army, while only the citizens with the highest evaluation scores are eligible to be hired for high-paying engineering jobs that oversee the machines. A father’s personal tale of heartbreak reveals this flaw to the protagonist, Paul Proteus. “[My son] just about killed himself studying up for [the National General Classification Tests],” the man says, “but it wasn’t any use. He didn’t do nearly well enough for college. There were only twenty-seven openings, and six hundred kids trying for them”
The way that Huxley has written and represented his characters allow the reader to visualize the story unfolding. Huxley’s main characters each embody something different. Lenina, a young woman who is conditioned to not feel any personal connection to another, but questions this notation once she meets John. Bernard, a young misfit who is flawed from a young age, although he is conditioned to be content, still has an immense amount of dissatisfaction for his life, and contradicts all that the World State stand for, and John, an outsider who is labeled ‘The Savage’ due to his upbringing in the reservation. In the World State, John expresses his indifference to the civilized community; “I ate civilization.” … "It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," [..] "I ate my own wickedness." In creating a character like John, Huxley communicates the question; at what cost does this happiness come? John’s character voice that without suffering, without pain, we cannot be fully fulfilled by happiness, as we do not know what it truly
Bernard’s physical traits make him unorthodox because he is an Alpha Plus male who is shorter and thinner than he should be. Bernard’s physical appearance problem originates from when he was being decanted. The rumor is that during the decanting process, someone added alcohol to his blood-surrogate. The alcohol caused Bernard to be different compared to the other Alphas, “Bernard’s physique was hardly better than that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion” (Huxley 64). Bernard is ashamed of his physical shortcomings and wishes that he could fit it with the rest of society. The fact that Bernard does not have a social life also makes him unorthodox. Instead of going out and taking part in the daily games, Bernard talks to Helmholtz Watson. In their conversations Bernard and Helmholtz discuss unorthodox subjects. Some the unorthodox subjects include Helmholtz wanting to write whatever he wants, Bernard expressing his feelings, and Helmholtz feeling ashamed for Bernard for being different. The final reason Bernard Marx is unorthodox is because he lies during his Solidarity Group. The Solidarity Group is a group that gathers to worship Ford and then participate in an orgy. During the part of the Solidarity Group when people see Ford, Bernard fakes
For as long as humans have existed, personal desires and conformity have been at odds with one another. Many great individuals have had to decide whether they want to sacrifice the social acceptance that comes with conformity in order to pursue the gratification that their personal desires encompass. In the case of Bernard Marx, he has a tough time finding a balance between pursuing his personal desire and conforming to society, seeing as his personal desire is to be recognized and admired by his peers without actually having to conform to the guidelines that his society has set for him and everyone else. In the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley conveys the idea that individuals seeking acceptance among their community can find it extremely
Huxley’s Brave New World is a dystopia. The world state is full of all the things one could ever want: happiness, security, sex. Yet still the world state would be the most horrible place to live in. Brave New World is a satirical novel exaggerating but also illuminating the truth. The reader becomes aware of the similarities between the World State and our current world and in the ways they differ. The novel makes the reader do more than just compare the real world to the world state; it made me aware of some essential things constituting being human. We need to have the full capacity and range to think and feel for ourselves to be able to orient ourselves and create an identity. Moreover, faults, natural processes, as well as books are what
The one person who he loved as a partner didn't share the same morals and this caused separation between them. Having a mother was an obscene quality, in a society where everyone belonged to everyone, family was a despicable thing. The isolation he felt was a strong potent to his beliefs; he begins to see that solitude is the best way to stay true to his values.“The Savage had chosen as his hermitage the old lighthouse…” the time he stayed alone he reflected on his life. As a being living in this world the time he was unaccompanied was the most meaningful part in the novel as he came to realize his own self. His interaction with the others became too much for him to handle and led him to his own
around him, all because of his obsession with power. We see obsession with power in Huxley's Brave New World with Mustapha Mond and the World State, and how Alphas must have power and authority over all of the other classes below them for they are genetically superior. The Alphas can even have a tendency to be jealous of the other Alphas. One of the principal characters, Bernard Marx, is a fairly decent example of an Alpha that shows signs of jealousy, for he is ridiculed for his short stature, therefore, being the cause of him being shy: one of his reasons for envying his colleagues (Huxley 41).