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Unit 20: Aldous Huxley—Brave New World: Themes and Characterization

20.1 Character List Notes

Lenina Crowne

Lenina is a beautiful woman who meets the group of students while inoculating the infants
against yellow fever. She dates Henry Foster in the beginning but agrees to go out with
Bernard Marx to the Savage Reservations. After visiting the Reservations, Lenina becomes
popular by her association with the Savage. She continually tries to sleep with the Savage but
becomes frustrated by his unwillingness. After she strips in front of John, he tries to beat her.
Lenina visits John at his lighthouse at the end of the novel, and he starts to whip her. It is
unclear whether she dies or not.

The Director

The Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, also called Tomakin,
leads a group of students on a tour. He introduces them to the techniques of fertilization and
segregation into classes. The arrival of Linda and John the Savage later humiliates him and
causes him to resign in disgrace.

Henry Foster

Foster is an expert on statistics within the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre.
He joins the student tour at the Director’s behest and quotes facts about the processes of the
hatchery. He is also in charge of maximizing the number of embryos each ovary can produce.
Foster is one of Lenina’s most frequent dates.

Bernard Marx

Bernard Marx loves Lenina Crowne, despite all of his social conditioning. He is short and
physically inadequate for the status of Alpha-Plus, and therefore has an inferiority complex.
Other characters believe that he may have accidentally received a dose of alcohol while in the
fetal stages. He is more independent thinking because of feeling separate from society. Bernard
Marx is close friends with Helmholtz Watson.

Mustapha Mond

Mustapha Mond is the Resident Controller for Western Europe and one of the Ten World
Controllers. He alone makes the rules for society and decides what works to publish. Mustapha
has read Shakespeare and other forbidden books, making him one of the most independent
thinkers within the society. He is the man who gives Bernard permission to bring the Savage
and his mother back to London.

Benito Hoover
Hoover is a former lover of Lenina, who describes him as too hairy. He is stereotypical of the
Alpha caste in obeying all the social norms and in quoting his hypnopaedic learning.

Helmholtz Watson
Watson is an Alpha-Plus with too much intelligence. He is friends with Bernard Marx because
both he and Marx are outsiders within the society. Watson eventually writes a poem that gets

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