Brave new world
...gh it certainly is a convenient way of explaining a possible pathway from the reader’s world to that of the World State. Analysis: Chapters 4–6 Bernard’s role as the protagonist—a role that John will later take over—continues in this section. Increasingly, he appears less like a political rebel and more like a social misfit who believes that changing society is the only way for him to fit in. His conversations with Helmholtz reveal that he is boastful of his liaison with Lenina, afraid of being caught criticizing the World State, and subservient to Helmholtz when it comes to matters of real rebellion. Bernard is a paradoxical character, at one moment lusting after Lenina and at the next hoping that he will have the strength to resist her advances. Helmholtz, whom we meet for the first time in this section, has the exact opposite of Bernard’s problem. Whereas Bernard is too small and strange for his caste, Helmholtz is, if anything, too perfect. His success with women, in his career, and in every other aspect of his life has led him to believe that there must be something more to life than high-tech sports, easy sex, and repetitive slogans. He talks to Bernard because Bernard shares his dislike for the system, but he is aware that Bernard’s dislike has a different basis than his own. The setting of these chapters changes rapidly: from the workplace to Helmholtz’s apartment; from Henry’s helicopter to Westminster Abbey Cabaret to a Crematorium; from Bernard’s apartment to the Community Singery; and so on. Some of the scene-shifting is simply used to flesh out a day in the life of a World State member. Lenina and Henry’s visit to the Westminster Abbey Cabaret is a blunt joke about the uses to which the World State puts ancient religious sites. Every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn’t do without Epsilons. (See Important Quotations Explained) As Henry and Lenina contemplate the crematorium, they come close to acknowledging that the caste system may be less than perfect. But then Lenina, troubled and disliking, retreats to one of her stock hypnopaedic phrases, regains her happiness, and the crisis is over. Once again, she is happy to be in her caste and disdainful of those in other castes. This episode, made possible by the setting of a helicopter trip past a Crematorium, shows how conditioning can keep the population from questioning the assumptions of the state in which they live. The biggest change in setting is from the World State to the Reservation, though a detailed description of the Reservation is held until the next section. Although the World State most obviously controls its members by conditioning them and gratifying their desires, there are hints that stability is maintained through methods that are still more sinister. Bernard’s sudden fear that someone is listening to his heretical conversation with Helmholtz suggests a totalitarian aspect of the World State. Outside work hours, World State citizens attend strictly regulated, scheduled social activities and never spend any time alone. The lack of time for reflection keeps them occupied and docile. Bernard’s fear shows that he is aware of the unwritten but potentially serious consequences of his heretical beliefs. Analysis: Chapters 7–8 These chapters contain a crucial plot development: the meeting of Bernard and John. John is an outcast who has always dreamed of living in the World State; Bernard is a World State misfit who is looking for some way to fit in. Their meeting sets in motion a chain of events that produces shattering consequences for both of them. Huxley uses a literary device called a flashback to bring Bernard, and the reader, up to date on John’s background. This device allows Huxley to present a collage of images from John’s childhood that would otherwise fit awkwardly into the overall structure of the narrative. If the narrative had been presented in strict chronological order, John and Linda’s story would have been told first. Coming in the middle of the novel, it has a greater impact because the reader already knows about the vast differences between World State and Reservation culture. Linda’s failure to fit in on the Reservation, and John’s confused upbringing, only make sense within the context that has already been provided. Linda’s experiences on the Reservation, as described by herself and by John, demonstrate the extent to which the World State citizens are dependent upon “civilization”—that is, on a life that is completely structured by the state. On the Reservation, she is practically helpless: she does not know how to mend clothing, cook, or clean, and the very idea of taking care of a child horrifies her. She turns to mescal as a poor substitute for soma, which until then had been her only method for dealing with unpleasant situations. John is a cultural hybrid, absorbing both his mother’s culture and that of the Indians on the Reservation. But he is also culturally adrift. The Reservation’s community does not accept him, and Linda’s Other Place is a distant world he only hears about in stories. So he turns to Shakespeare in his isolation and absorbs a third cultural value system. Shakespeare’s The Tempest provides an important parallel to Brave New World, and the two texts relate to one another on many levels. In the play, Prospero and his daughter Miranda are exiled to an island because Prospero’s brother betrayed him in order to gain political power. The only inhabitant on the Island is a native, Caliban, to whose deceased mother the island had belonged. Prospero usurps control of the island and decides to raise Caliban as a slave because he pities him and intends to civilize him. Shakespeare deftly portrays Caliban as an angry, violent figure, who could easily be interpreted as less than human, ruled by bestial appetites rather than higher instincts. When a ship arrives on the island, two of the stewards introduce Caliban to liquor, and liquor becomes Caliban’s “God.” Yet Shakespeare also manages to imbue Caliban with all the complexities of the colonized individual. Caliban may be angry and violent, but he has been oppressed by Prospero. Caliban becomes enthralled by liquor and sees it as a god, but he has never seen alcohol before, and the effects of becoming drunk must be staggering to him. Prospero purports to help Caliban by “civilizing” him, but Caliban resents Prospero for the theft of his home. Prospero views Caliban’s resentment as unfounded and as evidence of his bestial nature, and this prompts him to treat Caliban even more harshly. Caliban responds with violent action that only increases Prospero’s belief that Caliban is an animal. In The Tempest, Caliban is both “savage” and a “Noble Savage,” he is utterly displaced in every community, just as John is on the Reservation, and will come to be in the World State. Both The Tempest and Brave New World can be interpreted as allegories of colonization. Prospero decides to raise Caliban and “civilize” him in the same way that European colonials attempted to “civilize” the African, Asian, and native American cultures with which they came into contact. For British and other European colonizers, civilizing the savages was a process of replacing native cultures and languages with the culture and language of the colonizer. The colonizers effectively separated colonized peoples from their own history and culture, making it more difficult for the latter to rebel against the new implanted culture that had become their own. The entire World State is built on just such a premise, effacing the past and all its cultural legacies. The World State, in a sense, has colonized everyone. Analysis: Chapters 9–10 In these chapters the interlude at the Reservation ends and John’s life in the World State begins. The conflict between John’s values and the social mores of the World State starts to become obvious. The shift of setting, from the Reservation in New Mexico to the World State in England, foreshadows the shift that is about to take place in the lives of both John and Bernard. John’s character is revealed more fully in his confrontations with World State culture. His struggle to suppress his desire to touch Lenina demonstrates the moral code that he has internalized from Shakespeare and from the “savages” on the Reservation. A World State resident would have gone for instant gratification. John finds himself in the unenviable position of living in the World State without World State conditioning. He is attracted to Lenina, but his views on sex are so radically different from hers that conflict is inevitable. The struggle between John’s intense desires and his equally intense self-control is a major facet of his character. John’s habit of quoting lines from Shakespeare’s plays not only highlights his distance from World State society, it also serves as a reminder of the distance between our society, in which Shakespeare is revered as a writer with deep insight into human nature, and World State society, in which Shakespeare is unknown and even incomprehensible. Stylistically, John’s Shakespearean quotations contrast vividly with the utterances of the World State citizens. But there is one notable similarity between them. Both the World State citizens and John habitually speak in quotes and soundbites. Hypnopaedic messages like “A gramme in time saves nine,” are on everybody’s lips in the World State. At times the conversations between John and Lenina degenerate into a war of propaganda, each person spewing memorized phrases without even stopping to think about them. John’s propaganda sounds more palatable than Lenina’s, because Shakespeare’s poetic lines put the hypnopaedic messages to shame. Next to Shakespeare, “progress is lovely” sounds cheap and trashy. The juxtaposition of the two contributes to the satirical tone of the novel. The confrontation between Bernard and the Director illustrates the power of social condemnation. The Director decides to denounce Bernard in front of the other workers in order to make an example out of him. In part, World State members are forced to conform merely by peer pressure and the threat of public shame. Bernard turns the Director’s ploy on its head by shaming him with the spectacle of John and Linda. Bernard’s willingness to use John and Linda for his own gain further helps to portray him as someone who will do anything to gain social standing. By presenting Linda and John to the Director in front of the workers, he not only manages to save his own position but also to spitefully attack the Director and reduce his social standing. Lenina’s role throughout this chapter is a passive one, for the obvious reason that she is on soma-holiday for most of it. Going on soma-holiday is her only way of dealing with the negative emotions aroused by the Reservation. It is particularly ironic that she goes on soma-holiday in the middle of what should have been a real holiday (her vacation). Analysis: Chapters 11–12 In this section John gets a thorough introduction to World State society, which, for the most part, disgusts him. He perceives the culture of the World State to be superficial, inhumane, and immoral. The relationship between John and Bernard dramatizes the major themes of The Tempest. John, who originally believed he would play the part of Miranda, learning to love the new world revealed to him, becomes known as “the Savage” and takes on a role similar to Caliban’s; Bernard, by exposing John to civilization and expecting that to win John’s everlasting gratitude, plays Prospero to John’s Caliban. The fate of John’s mother, Linda, demonstrates what Mustaph Mond meant in suggesting that truth and happiness are incompatible. Everyone but John is content to allow Linda to abuse soma, even though they know it will kill her within a month or two. The doctor’s explanation to John demonstrates the World State’s callous attitude that human beings are things that should be “used up until they wear out.” Just as with manufactured goods, when people get old and worn out, they become disposable. Linda goes on permanent soma-holiday, living out the short remainder of her life in a blissful haze of hallucinations and fantasies. Bernard’s personal reasons for allowing Linda to succumb to soma are even more unpleasant. Everyone in London clamors to see John, but they are equally determined not to see Linda. With Linda safely out of the way, Bernard is free to use John for his own purposes. Through his exploitation of John, Bernard demonstrates that his previous dissatisfaction with the World State had merely stemmed from his desire to enjoy more of its privileges, rather than from any true desire to live as an “adult” (which is how he had presented the matter to Lenina on their first date). When he becomes successful and begins to enjoy the benefits of his Alpha status, he even drops his friendship with Helmholtz, a nonconformist with an increasingly bad reputation. Helmholtz threatens Bernard’s newfound success. The feely that John attends with Lenina involves some old racist stereotypes, but it is quite complicated in its irony. It begins with a scene in which a “gigantic negro” copulates with a blonde woman. This scene in itself would be highly shocking and taboo to Huxley’s white, middle-class, early-twentieth-century audience, but so far the feely-goers find it perfectly conventional. They even marvel at the realistic special effects. What the audience within the book finds shocking is when the black man, following a blow to the head that erases his conditioning, kidnaps the blonde for a monogamous three-week sexscapade in a helicopter. It’s shocking to them because of the monogamy. Finally, three Alpha males rescue her and order is restored. This scene reminds the reader of a feature of movies that is even older than Huxley’s novel. Theatergoers love to watch characters in movies transgress against the rules that the viewers themselves have to abide by. This vicarious enjoyment is given a thin veneer of respectability through a decorous ending that restores the status quo. But the fact remains that the audience enjoys fantasizing about the transgression. In part, this whole scene is Huxley’s joke, but it is also possible that monogamy is not as unusual a fantasy in the World State as we have been led to believe. The scene in which John reads Romeo and Juliet demonstrates the power of conditioning. Even though Helmholtz is fairly unorthodox, he is still a product of World State conditioning. He appreciates the artistic value of Shakespeare’s language, but he does not appreciate the drama of Juliet’s parents trying to convince her to marry Paris. Because John identifies his desire for Lenina with the love between Romeo and Juliet, Helmholtz’s laughter insults both his cultural values and his own innermost feelings. But Helmholtz cannot help it; the situations and emotions expressed in the play mean something very different to him than they do to John. Analysis: Chapters 13–15 The dramatic riot incited by John is the climax of the novel. John’s growing revulsion against everything in the World State finally propels him into a direct confrontation with it, and the authorities are forced to intervene. The events that immediately precede the riot reveal the conflicting forces that culminate in John’s outburst. John’s struggle with his physical desires, first introduced on the Reservation, continues when Lenina tries to seduce him. He insists on seeing Lenina as a pure, virginal woman, possessed of complete sexual modesty. To John, Lenina is only an abstract rendering of all the virtuous women he has read about in Shakespeare’s works. He struggles with the physical side of sexuality to the point that he wants to repress it entirely. When Lenina makes a pass at him, he calls her a whore for breaking the rules of a moral code she is not even aware of. “Whore” is the only other category that he has to understand Lenina. It is significant that when he locks himself away from Lenina, he chooses to read Othello, a play about the doomed relationship between a black African man and a white Venetian woman. Like John, Othello veers between the extremes of perceiving his beloved as a chaste statue and as a whore. It is this misperception that leads Othello to slaughter his wife, not an incompatibility between their two cultures. John’s experience in the Hospital for the Dying demonstrates the dehumanizing logic that the World State applies to death experience. Any tolerance he might once have felt for the practices and people of the World State disappears. He thinks of the Bokanovsky twins as maggots who defile his grieving process. Unfortunately for John, his mother is no help. Drugged on soma, she mistakes him for Popé. John’s fury and agony reflects the growing anguish he experiences when he is not recognized in the World State, even by his own mother. The society of the World State names him “the Savage,” associating him with a set of stereotypical characteristics. When John visits Eton, he watches a group of children laughing at “savages” on a Reservation performing ceremonial self-flagellation purification rituals. He sees himself reflected in their laughter as a curious, comedic spectacle, not as a human being. Bernard uses John as a curious specimen of “savagery” to attract important people into his own social circle. Helmholtz’s laughter at Romeo and Juliet makes John recognize that his struggle with his physical attraction for Lenina is a comedic, offensive spectacle even for one of the World State’s few nonconformists. Worse yet is the fact that he considers Helmholtz a friend with whom he can discuss his feelings for Lenina. The end result of all these separate episodes is that John acknowledges that he, as an individual, cannot exist within World State society. He is forced either to be a stereotyped representative of “the savage” or to succumb to the warped morals of the World State. John’s attempt to stir the Delta workers into rebellion by throwing away their soma symbolizes his struggle against happiness as the ultimate goal. John would rather see truth and real human relationships—even painful ones—than the near-slavery of soma. His own mother’s death by soma is also a contributing factor. Linda and the Deltas use soma to escape all pain and responsibility. This makes them become infantile, something that John points out when he asks the Deltas why they want to be “babies . . . mewling and puking.” John’s outcry describes the essential logic that produces the “stability” that the World State loves so much. The vast majority of World State citizens remain childlike their whole lives through the use of conditioning, social reinforcement, and soma. Helmholtz throws himself into the fray when he and Bernard arrive at the hospital, but Bernard hesitates. His hesitation is caused by the conflict between his desire to fit into the World State social machine and his desire to change the way it works. He fears associating himself with the nonconforming blasphemy of John’s revolutionary cry and Helmholtz’s support of John’s actions. Bernard knows that his participation will forever mark him as a dangerous subversive. Analysis: Chapter 16 The conversation between Mond and John is the intellectual heart of Brave New World. It is here that the issues implied by the rest of the novel are made explicit, and discussed in an abstract form. The rationale that Mond provides for suppressing John’s beloved Shakespeare gives us a crucial key to understanding the rest of their conversation. The mere fact that Shakespeare is old means that he doesn’t contribute to consumer behavior. (Huxley, of course, ignores the fact that people purchase new editions of Shakespeare, Shakespeare college courses, SparkNotes, etc.) While this reason seems superficial in comparison with Mond’s more developed arguments, it draws our attention to the fact that consumerism is central to the world of Brave New World. Like other dystopias, this novel doesn’t simply show us a world that is different from our own, it shows us a world that is a mirror of ours, with the worst features of our world drawn out and exaggerated. One of the central facets of Huxley’s novel is directed against the ever-increasing value it places on consumerism. By showing a world that suppresses institutions and experiences that are sacred in our own world in order to make way for the development of consumer values, Huxley demonstrates a conflict of values that exists in our own society. The “value” that drives the consumer is simply the gratification of appetites. In Brave New World, this one value has been developed to the point that people are “adults during worktime,” but infants in their leisure time and in their relationships. So Huxley’s first criticism of consumerism is that it is infantile—adults should be capable of other things. If consumption is the “happiness” that Mond refers to in his description of the World State, the other value that his society is predicated on is “stability.” In Mond’s account, happiness and stability depend upon one another. The stability Mond is talking about is econom...