Reading Response #1

Reading Response #1

Characters in "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

"A Brave New World" has some very rich characters who play very different roles in the story, although none of the characters are necessary to the story in the way they would be in most stories. The first main character introduced is Lennia although several other minor characters who play an important role are introduced first, Lennia is the first main introduction to the story, although that is not made clear until later. Lennia is an odd character in that none of the archetypes really fit her well, she has no real role in the story, but is always there. She plays the role of a goal more then a person, a kind of foil to the savages as they are a foil to her. An interesting thing about the characters of this novel is that they are mostly just for the setting and the theme, they play a support to a whole that is not the plot but the world.

The second main character, and much more so of one is Bernard Marx, an interesting person in this story. Bernard in a way shows clearly the flaws with the reality of the brave new world. He is somewhat of an outcast in the brave new world, or would be if people being alone was not some great crime in this story, something I find very interesting is that despite being an outcast he loves the world of the story, and he longs to be part of it, he desires the "happiness" of The Brave New World. "What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals." (62), the two men being Bernard and Helmholtz who I will talk about later but in this quote represents what separates Bernard from the world that Lennia fits in so well, he different and as history will tell you humanity has never been good at dealing with the different. Bernard is an "Alpha plus" which is essentially the intellectuals of this world the leaders and such, however he has stunted growth and this created a mental excess of sorts making him smarter then most but he is unable to socialize as others veiw him as something of a freak. This gives readers an interesting point of view into the story were you see the downside that you wouldn't think of in the new world, you think, or I think that its negative side is lack of freedom and individuality. What Bernard allows the reader to see the very human part of what I expected to be a very controlled inhuman environment, he lets the reader see that the world is still very human.

Helmholtz Wattson, is a minor character who plays a major role so I will mention him for the sake of Bernard to whom he plays the role of a foil. Helmholtz is very similar to Bernard in that he is smarter then he is supposed to be, without any kind of physical defects though, Helmholtz has everything he could want in the world so he of course finds himself looking for more. Later in the story when he encounters John, the savage he plays an important role in explaining the world to John who understood things in terms of Shakespeare and the lack of emotion of the world frightens him, Helmholtz becomes a friend of John and together they think which leads great examples of the differences in their respective societies.

The last main character I am going to go over is John, the savage. John is the only character in the story that is really outside the rule of the brave new world, aside from the other savages who don't really have a large role in the novel. John is the person of now's point of view, he sees in the brave new world what the average person of now would see (I think) and has a very liberal world view, which he gets from reading Shakespeare so he finds the faults which if I were in this world, without the brainwashing, that I feel I would see. John to, is an outcast, but not among the people of the brave new world but rather among the savages of the savage reserves. "Anyhow John seems to have caught it from the Indians. Because of course he was with them a lot. Even though they were so beastly to him." (103) The quote is from Johns mother who got lost in a savage reserve some time ago, and she gave birth to John making it impossible for her to go back to civilization as giving birth is some kind of great sin. So John grew up raised by someone form the brave new world and surrounded by people who live like natives off the land, leading him to have some very interesting world views, which he shares with the reader.