THOMAS / 'TOMAKIN', 'THE DIRECTOR'
administrator in the year 632AF of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The Director runs a futuristic baby-factory where the assembly-line production of genetic castes is streamlined and controlled, and maturing youngsters are brainwashed via neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopaedia ["sleep-learning"] into being happy with their state-allotted roles in life. The Director is an intelligent but orthodox-minded Alpha; he frowns on Bernard's individualism. His manner is charmless, self-important and didactic. The Director is disgraced after a sordid sex-scandal in his past is revealed. It transpires he is father of John the Savage, conceived after he impregnated Linda on a trip to the New Mexico Savage Reservation.
BERNARD MARX
a sleep-learning specialist at the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Bernard is a misfit. He is unusually short for an Alpha; an accident with alcohol in Bernard's blood-surrogate before his decanting has left him slightly stunted. Bernard's independence of mind stems more from his inferiority-complex and depressive nature than any depth of philosophical conviction. Unlike his fellow utopians, Bernard is often angry, resentful and jealous. At times, he is also cowardly and hypocritical. His conditioning is clearly incomplete. He doesn't enjoy communal sports, solidarity services, or promiscuous sex. He doesn't even get much joy out of soma. Bernard is in love with the highly beddable Lenina. He doesn't like her sleeping with other men, though in BNW "everyone belongs to everyone else". Bernard's triumphant return to utopian civilisation with John the Savage from the Reservation precipitates the downfall of the Director, who had been planning to exile him. Bernard's triumph is short-lived. Success goes to his head. Despite his tearful pleas, he is ultimately banished to an Island for his non-conformist behaviour.
JOHN THE SAVAGE
the illicit son of the Director and Linda. He was born and reared on the Savage Reservation ("Malpais") after Linda was unwittingly left behind by her errant lover. John the Savage is an outsider both on the Reservation - where the ignorant natives still practise marriage, natural birth, family life and religion - and the ostensibly civilised Brave New World: a totalitarian welfare-state based on principles of stability and happiness, albeit happiness of a shallow and insipid nature. The Savage has read nothing but The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. He quotes them extensively and, for the most part, aptly, though his allusion to "Brave New World" [Miranda's words in The Tempest] takes on a darker and bitterly ironic resonance as the novel unfolds.
Frequently Bernard sets himself off from the rest of the Alphas because he believes he is very different than the rest of them. It is rumored that he accidentally got alcohol while he was being born causing his stunted growth. Because of this, he is constantly extremely frustrated with his craving to fit in with the rest of the Alphas and not be considered different. His most distressing experiences come when he has to give orders to members of lower castes (pg 64). Having the physique of the average Gamma, he frequently finds himself having hard times getting the lower caste members to listen to him. His physical inadequacy caused woman to laugh at him if he made a proposal to “have” her, men would joke to one another, and constant mockery caused him to feel like an outsider. Another interesting oddity in Bernard is his dislike of soma. When meeting with Benito Hoover, he was offered a gramme of soma, to which he quickly turned and walked away (pg...
The outcome of what happened to Bernard forced him to see that mistakes were one reason a Utopian Society could not exist. The Character Bernard Marx is an example of human imperfection, not because he was referred to as deformed, but because the person who created him messed up. Individuals were decanted according to specification. Any deviation was evidently the result of some mistake, a mistake made by a human. These technological developments weren’t advanced enough to create such a perfect society. Bernard was an example of this undesired reality. He was deemed an outcast due to his imperfection. Being an outcast, however, allowed him to see the world differently. He was able to realize how everything was being manipulated and he was able to discern that it was wrong.
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.
According to Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said quoted, "Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted." Bernard is the odd egg in the basket and feels alienated from a society that does not accept him. Bernard is an alpha although he was never completely accepted as one because people often made up rumors that alcohol was in his blood surrogate. Bernard is alienated from the World State in multilple ways starting from his conception something went wrong immediately deeming him as abnormal. Currently in today's society we still view those with birth defects as abnormal and do not consider them as part of society because they are not normal. As with Bernard the alphas view him inferiorly, because of this Bernard despises all those in the World State and critizies their motives and desires. Bernard is not similar to the citizens in the World State because he is lovesick for Lenina who sees nothing in him except social gain, he becomes very jealous of men around Lenina making him fiercely angry because he stil...
Bernard Marx, an Alpha, symbolizing individualization, a character in the action of becoming one who only wants to belong to the idolized society. During the beginning of the novel Bernard seemed to be very different from society itself, he acted like a complete rebel, battling against the order of establishment. In the first few chapters he seemed to be an “individual”. For example on his first date with Lenina,
civilization versus savagery; the clashing of instinct with ideal: the ideal to live by the rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of the group, is set against the basic instinct to fulfill one’s immediate desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce one’s will. In the beginning of the book, soon after they crash-land on the island, Ralph and Piggy begin to- as it says in the book- “do as the adults would do”, that is, call
Bernard was born as an alpha, the highest caste. Unfortunately, he was born with multiple birth defects. Bernard was short and slightly disfigured, making him stick out compared to everyone else's genetic perfection. Because of this, Bernard was made fun of a lot by other people in the community making him feel lonely, even though he was born
The statistics are indisputable. Women make approximately 74 cents to every man’s $1 in the same job level, with the same level of schooling. There are more male C.E.O.s of Standard & Poor’s 1500 companies named John OR David, than there are women. The same applies for professors at Chicago, Harvard, M.I.T, Princeton, Stanford and Yale (Wolfers). Although more women and minorities are getting higher levels of education, there is a prevalent Glass Ceiling metaphorically weighing down on minorities and preventing a level financial playing field. The oppression of women can be blamed on the portrayal of them in the media, which have had detrimental effects on equal representation in big businesses, and how this relates to Huxley’s Brave New World.
Bernard was an outcast in society. Society thought something went wrong when he was born. He was miserable, he did not do any of the things other men did. He slept with any girls except for Lenina which is considered weird in society. As time went on, Bernard discovered John at the reservation. When Bernard brought John in from the Reservation; the director was fired. Bernard instantly became popular and arrogant. He was happy and in love with the idea of being the center of attention. For example, Bernard went to his friend Helmholtz and had a conversation about Bernard discussing how many women he is sleeping with. Helmholtz did not reply. “‘ You’re envious,’ he said….. Bernard went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, never would he speak to Helmholtz again” (pg 157). Popularity was the most important thing to Bernard. It is one of his weakness because he does not notice the society's flaws. His judgement is clouded because he found his place in
Bernard is a misfit who is constantly mocked by his peers for his physical defects, which is the primary cause of his dislike of the World State’s society. He is an Alpha male, and yet his physical flaws and insecurities lead him to feel lonely and self-conscious. In a world of tall, handsome, and broad-shouldered Alphas, Bernard is short, slender, and ugly, and prejudice in favor of size is universal. “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 (Huxley 56).” From this quote it becomes evident that Bernard is angry at the world for not accepting him and claims to be an individual. But in reality, he accepts this prejudice and he supports it because he knows that if he had a better physique, he would not be a subject of mockery of the society. He himself is prejudiced against people based on their...
Savagery is the condition of being primitive, uncivilized or the quality of being fierce or cruel (Google). It is something that comes easy to everyone at certain times in our life. People will learn it is harder to be good than bad. Being bad comes natural to everyone; people like the thrill of taking a chance. People are trained to be civil and polite from the time one grows up and it is not that hard because of the society everyone lives in. What would happen if the people’s democracy fell and everybody is left with nothing? How would the citizens react? Would they act like they were trained to do ever since they were born, or would they disregard all of it and do as they please because there is no definite authority figure to tell them how to live. In William Golding's, The Lord of the Flies, he brilliantly tells a story of life and death and everything in between. His use of symbolism with the conch, beast, and lord of the flies is phenomenal. It is a story that makes you think. Every person, when faced with reality, may act civil now, but in a survival situation, human nature takes over in the end.
...ovel, Lord of the Flies explores this idea of a civilized human’s ability to become a savage, when put in the right circumstance. In the beginning of the book, Golding’s main protagonists, Ralph, Piggy and Jack are symbols of civilization, order and hope. Once they are stranded on a desert island and left to their own devices, fear, the pursuit of power and human corruption turns the three boys into savages. Golding’s novel clearly depicts how without the structure of civilization, it is human nature for a person to revert back to its innate savagery. The novel shows how different people react differently to the influences of civilization and savagery. Savagery is a much more essential to a human than civilization. The young boys who were stranded on the island showed how easily one can go from a proper boy to a absolute savage guided only by fear and desire.
Technology, which has brought mankind from the Stone Age to the 21st century, can also ruin the life of peoples. In the novel Brave New World, the author Aldous Huxley shows us what technology can do if we exercise it too much. From the novel we can see that humans can lose humanity if we rely on technology too much. In the novel, the author sets the world in the future where everything is being controlled by technology. This world seems to be a very perfectly working utopian society that does not have any disease, war, problems, crisis but it is also a sad society with no feelings, emotions or human characteristics. This is a very scary society because everything is being controlled even before someone is born, in test tube, where they determine of which class they are going to fall under, how they are going to look like and beyond. Therefore, the society of Brave New World is being controlled by society form the very start by using technology which affects how the people behave in this inhumane, unrealistic, society.
There were quite a few changes made from Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World to turn it into a “made for TV” movie. The first major change most people noticed was Bernard Marx’s attitude. In the book he was very shy and timid toward the opposite sex, he was also very cynical about their utopian lifestyle. In the movie Bernard was a regular Casanova. He had no shyness towards anyone. A second major deviation the movie made form the book was when Bernard exposed the existing director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Bernard himself was moved up to this position. In the book the author doesn’t even mention who takes over the position. The biggest change between the two was Lenina, Bernard’s girlfriend becomes pregnant and has the baby. The screenwriters must have made this up because the author doesn’t even mention it. The differences between the book and the movie both helped it and hurt it.
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...