In the novel, Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley there are many different unique characters that may stand out to the reader. One character in particular that stands out is John. Unlike most of the characters in the world state society, John is the only child that was conceived through natural birth and born of a mother’s womb. His mother, Linda, didn’t expect to have John. Linda says that she had John because something went wrong with her contraceptives. Since Linda was on the Reservation, living with the Indians, she could not get an abortion and didn’t want to return to the World State while impregnated with John. The reason Linda ended up in the Reservation in the first place was because she fell and experienced a tragic accident …show more content…
Such aspects include his motives, aspirations, fears, obsessions and desires. One of John’s aspirations while he was on Indian reservation was to live in the World State. However, after acquiring knowledge of how the society actually works, his motive changes into not wanting to be part of the World State. Before John actually went to the World State with Bernard Marx, he did not really know what type of society it was. He had no idea of how that society was managed and how the people in the World State acted towards each other. John would ask his mother Linda about the World State but she did not tell him much about it. When she did talk to him about it, she would refer to it as the “other place”. John grew up in the Indian reservation and even though he was an outcast and wasn’t allowed to participate in the Indian’s rituals, he still went by their way of living and how they did …show more content…
For John’s case, he seems to not fit in with the people of the World State society. People of the World State see John as somewhat of an outsider. Lenina took soma and tried to seduce John but he ends up slapping her and calling her a whore. Then John goes to visit his mother but while at the hospital he is insulted by a group of “Bokanovsky” boys because they called Linda fat and ugly and he hits one of the boys. Shortly after John’s mother dies and he rushes out of the ward. After rushing out of the ward he comes across a group of Deltas that were getting their soma. Now that John is not disgusted and angry at the World State society he riots and throws the soma out of the window. The Deltas become angry and start to riot as well. It got to a point where the police had to come and spray soma vapor and anesthetics over everybody in order to calm everybody down. In the end John secludes himself from the World State and moves to a lighthouse. At the lighthouse he punishes himself by whipping himself because he felt that he was contaminated and needed to cleanse. Many people came to watch John whip himself and everybody started to sing “Orgy-porgy”. The next morning John woke up and realized that he took part in the one thing that he despised. After remembering everything that happened the night before, he hung himself inside the lighthouse. John does not fit into this society at large. His views are
At the beginnings of the 1900s, some leading magazines in the U.S have already started to exhibit choking reports about unjust monopolistic practices, rampant political corruption, and many other offenses; which helped their sales to soar. In this context, in 1904, The Appeal to Reason, a leading socialist weekly, offered Sinclair $500 to prepare an exposé on the meatpacking industry (Cherny). To accomplish his mission, Sinclair headed to Chicago, the center of the meatpacking industry, and started an investigation as he declared“ I spent seven weeks in Packingtown studying conditions there, and I verified every smallest detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as exact as a government report” (Sinclair, The Industrial Republic 115-16). To get a direct knowledge of the work, he sneaked into the packing plants as a pretended worker. He toured the streets of Packingtown, the area near the stockyards where the workers live. He approached people, from different walks of life, who could provide useful information about conditions in Packingtown. At the end of seven weeks, he returned home to New Jersey, shut himself up in a small cabin, wrote for nine months, and produced The Jungle (Cherny).
The adult John comes to civilized society as an experiment by Marx and Mond to see how a "savage" would adapt to civilization. Frankly, he does not adapt very well. He is appalled by the lifestyle and ideas of civilized people, and gets himself into a lot of trouble by denouncing civilization. He loves Lenina very much, but gets very upset at her when she wants to have sex with him. He physically attacks her, and from that point on does not want to have anything to do with her. When his mother dies, he interferes with the "death conditioning" of children by being sad. Finally, his frustrations with the civilized world become too much for him and he decides to take action. He tries to be a sort of a Messiah to a group of Deltas, trying to free them from the effect of soma. He tells them only the truth, but it is not the truth that the Deltas have been conditioned to believe, so to them it is a violent lie and they begin to cause a riot. When the riot is subdued, John is apprehended and taken to have a talk with Mustapha Mond.
When John was brought to the Brave New World, his inhibitions were happening by other people right in front of him. He saw sex as a common occurrence, and nobody really had any emotion toward it. Everyone enjoyed it, but not spiritually. In sense, sex did not light an eternal flame for the Brave New World like it did in the savage reservation. A piece of a mother and father could be put together for a child in the savage society, but in the Brave New World, everyone had their own life. There were no personal relationships, and there was no love. Also, drugs were looked down upon by the reservation, and yet, in the Brave New World, drugs, specifically soma, are the food for life. Instead of living through rough situations, society went on soma holidays for their problems.
Science and Technology have a strong influence on the daily lives of the citizens in the world state. The first influence is through the use of drugs and in particular, soma. Soma is a drug that is used in the world state by everyone to create false happiness. When john, Bernard and Helmholtz meet Mustafa mond the leader of the world state, Mond explains the beneficial effects of simply consuming one drug on a daily basis. “Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that’s what soma is.” (Helmholtz, 162) In the world state, there is only praise for the drug known as soma, as there are no side effects the members of society fear of. Science and technology has reached a point where it allows a simple tablet to relieve its citizens of any sort of problem that they may encounter. Furthermore Soma is produced in large quantities for consumption in order to suppress understanding of what is around the members of society. Secondly, along with the Soma consumption, the citizens are also influenced by science in everyday life by not being able to gain knowledge. methods of gaining knowledge include: reading books or anything that promotes an idea. Using technology, the world state prohibits any type of reading. When small children are being conditioned to keep away from books, the procedure is presented, “Crumpling the illuminated pages of the books, the director waited until all were happily busy. Then, ‘Watch carefully,’ he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal... There was a violent explosion... The children screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.” (16) even at a young age...
In Aldous Huxley's novel, "Brave New World" he introduces a character named, Bernard Marx an alpha part of the upper higher class who does not quite fit in. Bernard is cursed by the surrounding rumors of something going wrong during his conditioning that he becomes bitter and isolates himself from those around him in the World State. Huxley's character experiences both alienation and enrichment to being exiled from a society that heavily relies on technology and forms of entertainment with little to no morals.
“The Jungle” is a sociological novel, the work of public and literature heritage. The story is about the hard destiny of Lithuanian immigrants who seek for freedom and justice in America that become the hostages of merciless socialistic labor system in the United States. The cruel story takes place in the naturalistic scenes of gloomy slaughterhouses of Chicago, where, in monstrous miasmatic of demoralization, the hero flay the dead tubercular carcasses. With the help of grandiose rhetorical techniques like metaphor, parallelism, simile, key words, amplification and outstanding verbal approaches, Upton Sinclair won the hearts of thousands people due to his heartfelt language of explicit naturalism and showed the oppressing atmosphere of socialism.
The World State is filled with essentially clones; no one is truly a free thinker, which is why Huxley writes in John. John is the purest form of individual that is present in Brave New World. John Savage is viewed by the society as this sort of animal, untamed and different. John is enthralled by how the ‘civilized’ world views life. The simplicity of life sickens him.
“Brave New World,” is a novel written by Aldous Huxley where he explains that everything is based on a futuristic science which he claimed sprang forth from him because of his experience as “an ordered universe in a world of plan less incoherence” (River 4 1974). People seem to care more about temporal things rather than emotions. Technology also seems to be the most important aspect and everyone is affected by it in one way or another, whether if it is negative or positive. This does not necessarily mean that everyone is fully happy with technology because in a way they are all slaves to it. Another thing discussed in the novel is the lack of freedom. Due to a lot of technological development there exists this division in between people even before their birth that their fate has already been decided where subsist these casts such as Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas e.t.c. They are pushed away from freedom of choice and forced to live in a bubble of their own.
“The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.
The story of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley depicts a utopian society conflicted by stability. People are oblivious to the morals and ethics upheld by their ancestors 600 years before and, in turn, are demoralized. Babies are born in laboratories, relationships last no longer than "bedtime", and drugs are provided by government for daily use by their citizens. The drug, "soma" symbolizes estatic rapture experienced by the gloomy looking for escape, material religion for those looking for comfort from a supernatural force, abused aphrodisiac for lovers looking to have a good time, and complete technocracy from a government using a controlled substance to dominate the minds of its people. Soma and its uses reveal a society in ruins using drugs as an escape from reality and life's struggles.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World portrays a society in which science has clearly taken over. This was an idea of what the future could hold for humankind. Is it true that Huxley’s prediction may be correct? Although there are many examples of Huxley’s theories in our society, there is reason to believe that his predictions will not hold true for the future of society.
John is overwhelmed by all the people that he sees that are all the same. He tries to fit in by focusing all his heart and energy into Lenina. However when he realizes that she has fully succumbed to the ways of the brave new world and she is truly lost, he realizes that he can’t start a life there with her. Shortly after that John’s mother, Linda, died from soma. All the soma intake caused her lungs to give out.
All sense of individuality and self worth is taken way from the narrator when her name is never revealed to the audience. Furthermore, John continues to belittle his wife by giving her the command to not walk around at night. Although the John thinks in his mind that he is looking out for the best interest of his wife, in actuality, he is taking away his wife’s abilities to make choices for herself. There is a possibility that John’s controlling personality is one of the factors that led to his wife’s psychosis. Such a controlling life style more than likely limited the narrator’s ability to live any life outside of the home.
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley deftly creates a society that is indeed quite stable. Although they are being mentally manipulated, the members of this world are content with their lives, and the presence of serious conflict is minimal, if not nonexistent. For the most part, the members of this society have complete respect and trust in their superiors, and those who don’t are dealt with in a peaceful manner as to keep both society and the heretic happy. Maintained by cultural values, mental conditioning, and segregation, the idea of social stability as demonstrated in Brave New World is, in my opinion, both insightful and intriguing.
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.