A Brave New World Main Characters Review
Ah, Bernard. The poor lukewarm soul with just enough guts to make a few people uncomfortable, but not enough guts to really make any significant difference. He is like a horsefly on a cow-annoying and pesky, yet tolerable. He is a pathetic creature bou nd to a social system which has little use for his slightly curious mind and off track notions. He is a round peg trying to fit into a square holed utopia inhabited by square pegged people. Not only is he a prisoner to the society in which he was raised , but also to the unhealthy pride and desire for recognition, both of which course furiously through his veins.
When we are first introduced to Bernard, he is overhearing a conversation between Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator. They are talking about Lenina, a particular woman worth having sex with. It is here that we get a glimpse of Bernard's charac ter and realize that he is not quite like everyone else. Instead of buying into the idea that "everyone belongs to everyone else," he is outraged and disgusted that Lenina is being talked about as if she were merely a pi ece of meat. We see that he is n ot as conditioned as the rest of society. Yet, while he questions the society he lives in, he seems unable to move beyond questioning to action. Life, I think would have been better for Bernard if he could have gone either one way or the other with rega rds to his thinking. Instead, he is in a constant limbo of frustration and wavering which continues throughout the book until the end when he is finally sent to an island with "people like him." It is here where Bernard finally seems to be at peace with himself
John-a man, an animal, savage, wise beyond words, uncivilized yet civilized, full of life, proud. This is John-at least part of him, for he is by far the most complex character of Brave New World. John was born on the reservation, Malpais, to the Beta woman called Linda. From the time he was born, his mother attempted to teach him the ways of the "civilized people" but it was useless, for John was not one of he socially conditioned, brainwashed kind. Instead, he grew up among the savages and le arned to think on his own, to make decisions, and to experience pain as well as great joy. He learned how to read and discovered the great works of Shakespeare. Yet despite his seemingly vast knowledge, John appears to be very naive when it comes to th e people of the Brave New World. He goes to this world without understanding that Bernard is simply using him and his mother for his own gain. He call the Director his father without knowing that this is akin to the most horrible word one could utter. He falls in love with a woman who has no concept of the emotion. He experiences the feelies and knows that he can never be a part of this world. He is a real person with real feelings and emotions, and not a body with a prefabricated mind like the other s in Brave New World.
"One could see that, for all the lupus and the purple eyes, she was uncommonly pretty...a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic." This is the first description we have of Lenina Crowne, a nurse responsible for injecting embryos with immunizations against diseases like typhoid and sleeping sickness. She is just like all the others in her social class. She has been socially conditioned to accept everything about herself and everyone else. She repeats with little thought the phrases that have been progra mmed into her psyche since "birth." Despite these obvious similarities between her and everyone else in this brave new world, Lenina seems to have a minute trace of individual personality and thinking capability that is lacking in the majority of others. Unlike Bernard, whose life and thoughts are in constant conflict and turmoil with the rest of society, Lenina experiences only mild discomfort when she occasionally expands her thought beyond the realm of society' programming. This discomfort is quickl y relieved with a gramme or two of soma.
She questions the truth behind the accusations that Bernard was not injected properly as an embryo. Instead, she defends his character if even for just a short time. She is willing to go against the flow, but not long enough or hard enough to disrupt th e happy little society. She is not a dynamic character yet she plays an important role in the lives of several others.
"So fat. And all the lines in her face, the flabbiness, the wrinkles. And the sagging cheeks with those purplish blotches. And the red veins on her nose, the bloodshot eyes...And under the brown sack-shaped tunic those enormous breasts, the bulge of th e stomach, the hips." Need I go on? This is the portrait of Linda that Huxley paints for us. His descriptions are graphic and it is obvious that Linda is far from a beauty queen. She lives on a reservation among uncivilized people, with her son, John. Her house is dirty, her clothes are dirty, her teeth are dirty. She blows her nose on her fingers. Any visitor to the reservation would categorize her as uncivilized as the rest of the savages who live there. However, it wasn't always like this for L inda. In fact, her life was incredibly different before it took the wild turn to the reservation.
You see, Linda was a Beta in the civilized Brave New World. She worked in the Fertilizing Room, "dated" the D.H.C., wore nice clothes, and took soma whenever things got a little too rough. She was conditioned along with the rest of society. However, on a vacation to the reservation with the D.H.C., Linda got pregnant and was left behind to raise her son among "savages." Instead of adapting to the situation in any way, Linda wallowed in self pity and the memories of her previous life. Her social condi tioning was so deeply embedded in her being that it held her captive in its vices. She longed for the good ol' days of civilization, sterilization, and "happiness." Thus, when she returned to the Brave New World, she made up for lost time by drowning he rself in obscene amounts of soma and eventually died of "happiness." She was indeed a pitiful person who died at the hands of society.