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Fiction

Notes Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. Brave new world occurs ......... years in the future.
2. Huxley reveals some of the main sources of......... .

3. Bernard enters his private vehicle and flies over to visit ......... .
4. ......... cross the Atlantic and go to a hotel near the reservation.
5. The ......... leads Bernard and Lenina into the reservation.
6. Bernard asks John to tell him about growing up in the ......... .
The allusions to Macbeth also deal with the tension between knowledge and power. Just as
Macbeth received enough foresight to lead him to destruction, so too has Huxley’s civilized
world suffered because it strove for knowledge and the power that comes with it. Just as in
Macbeth, this quest for power must ultimately lead to a downfall.

Chapter 9
Summary
The strange events have overwhelmed Lenina, so she consumes a large amount of soma and
falls asleep for nearly eighteen hours. Bernard waits until she is asleep and sneaks off to call
His Fordship Mustapha Mond in London to arrange to bring John and Linda back to London.
He receives permission and returns to the Reservation to pick them up. When he meets the
Warden of the Reservation, Bernard acts boastful and self-confident, as if he “was in the habit
of talking to his fordship every day of the week.”

Task What happens when John watches Lenina sleep? What does he think or feel?

John goes to the house where Bernard and Lenina are staying on the Reservation. Since it is
silent, he fears that they have already left. He peeks in the window, sees Lenina’s suitcase, and
realizes they are still home, so he breaks a window and enters the house. He looks around,
opens Lenina’s suitcase, plays with her perfume powder and clothing, and finally finds Lenina
lying asleep on her bed. He breathes in her scent and feels stunned by her beauty. Lines from
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, extolling Juliet’s beauty, enter his head, but he refrains from
his urge to unzip her jacket and see her naked body. When he hears Bernard’s helicopter, he
leaps out of the window just in time to meet Bernard returning from his visit with the warden.

Analysis
The reader sees several new aspects of John’s personality. John convinces himself that he loves
Lenina, and the chapter expresses his love by the way he looks at her and inhales her perfume.
John retains extreme modesty, for when he imagines undressing Lenina, he immediately feels
ashamed for his impure thoughts.
John’s modesty towards Lenina represents a central conflict between the Indian society and
the civilized world. John relates all of his emotions to Shakespeare’s depiction of love, as
Romeo and Juliet is his only point of reference. He identifies Lenina in the role of Juliet,
indicating his reliance on Shakespeare for his emotional education since Linda was unable to
provide him with emotional lessons.

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