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Unit 18: Aldous Huxley—Brave New World: Detailed Study of Text-I

brought her mescal (alcohol). At one point, the women of the village beat Linda because they Notes
did not want her to continue sleeping with their husbands. Following the beating, Linda
slapped John because she blamed him for her predicament.
Linda taught John to read while he was a child, and reading allowed him to superior to the
other boys who beat and taunted him for being different. On his twelfth birthday, John received
a volume of The Complete Works of Shakespeare. He learned to read the entire volume and
received an odd sort of inspiration from many of the passages. Once, he found his mother in
bed with Pope and fell into a rage. Remembering a particular verse from Shakespeare (“When
he is drunk asleep, or in his rage / Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed...”), he attempted
to kill Pope with a knife, though he failed and suffered a beating.
At fifteen, John learned how to make clay pots from one of the older Indians. Later the same
man taught him how to construct bows and arrows. However, John did not receive permission
to enter the kiva, a ritual initiation to turn the young boys into men. Instead, the other village
boys drove him away into the desert with a barrage of stones. This incident highlighted his
status as an outsider and made him lonely.
John and Bernard share a sense of alienation from their respective cultures. John tells Bernard
that he once sneaked off to have the sacred animal dreams that the Indian boys must have,
even though the tribe had not let him go with the other boys. John clearly experiences everything
emotionally even though neither society considers deep emotions to be “normal” behavior.
Bernard invites John to return to England with him, realizing that John could be useful in
ensuring that Bernard does not go to Iceland. He plans to use John to blackmail the Director.
John in turn delights in the chance to go to England and exclaims, “Oh brave new world,”
when he hears that Linda will also come.

Analysis
Because the Indian world does not accept him, John agrees to leave in the hopes that the
Utopian world can accept him. John represents the opposing values of native civilizations and
civilized society. Although Huxley uses the future dystopian society as a point of contrast, the
novel makes a larger point about the way all societies treat unfamiliar cultures. John symbolizes
this difference, as he is too civilized and emotional for the savage lands but too savage for the
civilized world.
John also parallels Bernard in that he has struggled to join society but has received only
rejection. He now has only two choices, the insanity of Bernard’s world or the lunacy of the
Indian village. This dilemma will remain a central conflict for John, who cannot fit into either
society because of his hybrid nature. However, by agreeing to Bernard’s invitation to go to
England, John offers the other world a chance to accept him.
John’s history conveys further information about the life of the Indians and about his own
isolation. He affirms his individuality through the retelling of his unique life story. John is a
passionate human who uses Shakespeare as his emotional guide. Unfortunately, John’s taste
for Shakespeare suggests that John will not fit into normal society either. His emotional nature
will forever alienate him from all existing cultures.
The narrative continues to allude to Shakespeare, especially Macbeth and The Tempest, from
which the title “Brave New World” comes. Shakespeare’s plays represent all of the originality
that this dystopian world has lost. His works signify both the height of civilized culture and
the vast array of human emotions. Shakespeare’s oeuvre is the pinnacle of human achievement,
something that the savage world cannot achieve because of oppression and something that the
civilized world no longer has.

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