Use of an Outsider’s Perspective in Brave New World

Aldous Huxley uses the viewpoint of an outsider, or Savage, to give the reader different perspectives of his dystopian world in Brave New World. After traveling to the World State from the reservation, John (the savage) disagrees with the lack of intimacy, the lack of morality, and the lack of free will that he witnesses there, which shows the reader a very different side of the World State. These imperfections, along with many other factors, cause John to plunge into insanity and eventually commit suicide.

There is a severe lack of intimacy, or close personal relationships in the World State which makes John feel isolated and unsure of how to act towards others, which gives the reader insights into the dealings of relationships in the World State. A prime example of the contrast between John’s views and those of the rest of the world is his relationship with his mother. By today’s standards they were not exceptionally close but their relationship is closer than any other in the World state. When his mother dies, the rest of the world seems to find no sympathy for his hardship making him feel alone. The reason for this is that nobody has ever had an intimate relationship with anybody else and nobody in the World State has ever had a mother, because the world controllers feel almost as if “it is somehow more scientific to deny that love is an original emotion, and speak instead of the damming and diverting of instinct and the functional value of this largely conjectural process for the stability and continuity of society” (Miller 25). As a matter of fact, “to say one was a mother-that was past a joke: it was an obscenity” (Huxley 126).

The lack of intimacy in the World State is also contrasted by John’s reading ...

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...through John’s denial of Lenina’s advances, and his feelings of unworthiness throughout the novel. Finally the lack of Freedom is shown more vividly through John’s reactions to the many radical practices to retain stability in the World State. The use of an outsider in a dystopian novel greatly benefits said novel by showing many different perspectives on the flawed aspects of the depicted society.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. London: Granada Publishing, 1977.

Miller, Gavin. “Political Repression and Sexual Freedom in Brave New World and 1984.” Huxley’s Brave New World: Essays. North Carolina: Mcfarland Company Publishers, 2008. 17-25.

Rottensteiner, Franz. The Science Fiction Book: An Illustrated History. New York: The Seabury Press,1975.