Individuality In Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a chilling book that is just a little too possible for anyone’s comfort, regardless of the time frame in which one lives. Most importantly, the book heavily questions one’s sense of individuality, as well as if being an individual is worth the consequences. In Brave New World, being an individual brings nothing but pain and suffering, sometimes physical, sometimes mental. Individuality, within their society, is the sole cause of misery and unhappiness. All of the intellectual characters featured in the book, Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson, eventually Lenina Crowne, as well as John the Savage, reflect this constantly. Bernard Marx is the first real individual that we truly see in the book. In a society centered …show more content…

He was not born with the ingrained sense of unity that the World State promotes, and as a result, is very unique. However, this ends up making him very, very unhappy.“‘...the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy… the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind… I claim them all,” (Huxley, 215). His sense of individuality, so unique and novel in comparison to the rest of the World State, ends up almost forcing him to wish the individuality upon people who realize that all it does is cause misery, rather than the happiness that John the Savage promoted with it. “They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision!” (Huxley, 190). In the end of the book, after the orgy-porgy-ford-and-fun, John’s sense of regret and abhorrence towards what he had done - all side effects of his individuality - drove him to a miserable …show more content…

Lenina Crowne, a Beta Plus, had shown no outward sign of individuality. Yet, at the end of the novel, she was influenced by John the Savage just enough as to reveal her extraordinary inner self . In the beginning, she was very happy how she was. She did everything that everyone else did, and she was happy not knowing any different. Yet, towards the end of the novel, she began to have a massive crush on John the Savage, something very unique and even moreso frowned upon. When she attempted to seduce John, as was the only way she knew how to display affection, he hit her and fled. “Terror had made her forget about the pain… ‘Go… or I’ll kill you.’ … one arm raised and following his every movement with a terrified eye… she was interrupted in the midst of [her] uneasy speculations…” (Huxley, 176-178). After being struck, she felt a myriad of unpleasant emotions. Terror, unease, fear, all negative, miserable emotions, all as cause of her expressing her individuality in the only way she knew

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