MAIN CHARACTERS
Bernard Marx is the most important character in the first part of the book. Huxley doesn’t describe him physically in detail. Bernard is thin and very small, even though he is an Alpha, who are supposed to be bigger than the normal size. Bernard looks like a Gamma person. He is an outsider, because he doesn’t feel so confident as the other people, he’s never asked for dates, and the lower castes don’t sometimes obey him as they should. Everyone regards him as an odd person, and they say that, when he was still bottled, someone accidentally poured alcohol in his blood surrogate; this is the explanation of why he is so strange. A lot of people avoid him because of his unsavoury reputation. Bernard is also sensitive, he gets angry when he hears Henry Foster talking about Lenina as if she were a piece of meat. Bernard is very insecure, not like the rest of the Brave New World citizens; he likes to be alone and think. His friend is Hemholtz Watson; they both get on well because they feel similar. Hemholtz also doesn’t adapt himself well in the society. Bernard is very shy, specially with girls but in the end, Bernard packs himself up and asks Lenina if she wants to go to the Savage Reservation. When they return, Bernard changes; he starts to participate in social events and dances. He becomes more social, goes out with a lot of women, and all of this because he is now famous thanks to having brought the Savage to the civilized world.
Lenina Crowne in the Conditioning Centre, where babies are conditioned. She isn’t melancholic or lonely like Bernard, she’s just the opposite; she likes to enjoy the Brave New World activities, like the feelies, golf, and so on. She goes to the Savage Reservation with Bernard although he finds him odd. Even though this mysterious feeling of Bernard attracts her. When she meets John the Savage, she falls in love with him. She behaves herself with John according to the typical behaviour of the civilized world, and she doesn’t understand that the concepts that both have of determined things differ from each other.
John the Savage was born in Malpais, but is the son of Linda, a woman who came from the civilized world. John is different from all the citizens in Brave New World, he isn't happy in that society because he hasn't been conditioned; this is way he is aware of the truth, that all the citizens are conditioned and that they aren't free. John life is determined to finish in suicide because he isn't accepted in Malpais and because he doesn't get used to the way of living in the Utopian society. John dies not because of him, but because of both societies in which he doesn't fit. John and Linda are the only ones who know Malpais and London well. Linda loves the Utopian World because she was conditioned to do so. John is the only one who can freely decide which place he likes more; he prefers Malpais.
Linda is John's mother. He went to the Savage Reservation from the civilized world to visit it with Director Tomakin, but she was pregnant and couln't return to London, so she stayed there. She didn't adapt herself to the way of living of the Savages, and these didn't care to try and understand her. She suffered a lot in Malpais because she was conditioned to live in another world, vey different from the one of the reservation. Linda is the symbol of individual failure, it's her own personality that makes her die when she finally returns to London.
Bibliography for this page:
members.tripod.com/~siser/characters.html
The book itself, available online in www.ddc.net/ygg/etext/brave.htm
© Mireia Ferrandis Pradas