Literary Analysis #2

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1) Brave New World is about a futuristic society where everyone is told and programmed how to act. There are five different groups of castes which include (in order of highest to lowest) Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. The last three classes were oxygen deprived in their test tubes and the Epsilons were greatly deprived and even poisoned with alcohol in order to keep "stupid". The Alphas, on the other hand, are tall, beautiful, and smart. As kids, the people are encouraged to engage in sexual activities which helps to keep their emotions in control. Bernard Marx is one main character we meet who is an Alpha-Plus but unlike the other Alphas, he is short. Because of this, he feels isolated and different than one another. Helmholtz Watson is another character who is both an Alpha and a man who feels out of place. Lenina is a beautiful woman who is adored by every male. Bernard takes an interest in Lenina because he feels like she is different and takes her on a date to the Savage Reservation. The Director reveals that he has visited this place and met a woman whom he ended up losing so he came back alone. When Bernard finds out that the Director wants to deport him, he freaks out and takes a lot of soma, the drug constantly used by the citizens of the book. Meanwhile, Lenina is horrified by all the dirty people and the horrific smells. They meet a white man named John who has been raised on the Reservation as well as his mother Linda. Bernard then realizes that John's mother is the missing woman the Director met and John is his son. He gets excited as he can use this to blackmail the Director so he won't get sent away. Lenina and John start to have feelings for each other and both John and Linda come back home with Lenina and Bernard. When Bernard introduces the Director to John and Linda, John starts to shout "Dad" which is a vulgar word in the book and runs out of the room covering his ears. John is worried about Lenina becomes she seems to be in a "soma-coma" which is going to kill her if she keeps it up but nobody else cares. John also spends time bonding with Helmholtz over Shakespeare books and Helmholtz realizes that it is indeed possible to write passionately. When Lenina tells John to have sex with her he becomes horrified and calls her a whore because where he comes from, people save themselves for marriage. John leaves after when he receives a call saying his mother is dying, and she dies shortly after he arrives. John is grief-stricken and everyone around him is confused with this strange emotion which angers John even more. He causes a riot by throwing soma out the windows and Bernard and Helmholtz quickly rush over before the police come. The three guys are taken to Mustapha Mond's office where Bernard rats out his two friends. Mustapha talks to Helmholtz and tells him that he may actually like being sent to the island where he can meet others who are like him, and he agrees. John and Mustapha then talk about literature and emotions. However, Mustapha won't let John live with Helmholtz because he wants to continue his social experiment. John has had it with everything and runs away to an abandoned lighthouse and starts making himself throw up to cleanse himself of the horrible civilization he just witnessed. Eventually, he hangs himself not being able to deal with all the reporters watching him freak out and Lenina when she tries to show up to talk to him. 

2) Two of the big themes in the novel were the dangers of an all powerful world and the advancement of science as it affects human individuals. Huxley wrote this book during the Industrial Revolution when many life-changing inventions and techniques were created like the assembly line with cars. Aldous Huxley used this assembly line method with eggs and sperm in order to create numerous beings who were made and put into certain castes. The humans were conditioned to have no emotions and love whatever job that came with their caste.

3) The tone throughout the whole book was very satirical/ironic. "Roses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiff of asafoetida – wedded indissolubly before the child can speak. But wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour. For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnopaedia." "In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity. Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had only to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and before the lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endless band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of that slow interminable procession on the band." "The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables."

4) Literary Terms:
- Imagery: "The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory."
-Parallelism: "One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide."
-Exclamation: "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!"
-Onomatopoeia: "Whizz and then, click!"
-Simile: "'Embryos are like photograph film', said Mr. Foster waggishly, as he pushed open the second door. 'They can only stand red light.'"
-Rhetorical Question: "Could the effects of this germinal mutation be undone? Could the individual Epsilon embryo be made a revert, by a suitable technique, to the normality of dogs and cows?"
-Dialogue: "I've had it nearly three months." "Chosen as the opening date of the new era." "Ending is better than mending; ending is better..."
-Flashback: "Lenina suddenly remembered an occasion when, as little girl at school, she had woken up in the middle of the night and become aware, for the first time, of the whispering that have haunted all her sleeps"
-Setting: London
-Rhyming Scheme: "Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted! Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted? Skies are blue inside of you, The weather's always fine; For there ain't no Bottle in all the world Like that dear little Bottle of mine."

Characterization: 
1) Direct- ""Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips."
Direct- "On the fringe of the little group stood a stranger-a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark."
Indirect- "'We can electrify that whole strip of floor,' bawled the Director in explanation." The Director is shown electrifying infants so people classify him as heartless and cruel.
Indirect- "'Suffer little children,' said the Controller." The Controller is shown as a cruel person because who wants little kids to suffer?


2) I don't think Huxley changes his syntax/diction when he talks about the different characters. He keeps a neutral satirical tone throughout the whole book.

3) Bernard Marx is definitely a dynamic character. At the beginning of the book Bernard was so unique compared to the other characters that you couldn't help but like him. He was rebellious, smart, and cared about Lenina as a person rather than "a piece of meat". However, as we progressed further into the book Bernard started to act different. By the end of the book when he decides to uproot John and his mother, he proved himself to not be the guy he was characterized in at the beginning of the book. Instead, he just wanted to excel socially up the ladder and did whatever he needed to do to climb higher.

4) After reading I did feel like I met Bernard Marx. I felt he was more like a person than a character. For example, when he blackmailed John and his mother his true self came out. He was shown as a true human being who has imperfections and can be selfish. Just like a lot of human beings, Bernard was out for his own selfish-needs which, in his case, was to progress to a socially high Alpha label.