Author: Henry Lai, Plano High School
📍Plano, TX

Brave New World Final Draft

Often, when people meet others they disagree with or are different from, their instinct is

to act in ways that divide them further from those people. Aldous Huxley warns against this in his portrayal of John the Savage, a character in his novel, Brave New World, by drawing attention to how John, in an attempt to do the same thing, ended up adopting some of the worse traits of his opposites, while still disliking them. Specifically, John’s extreme following of Shakespeare’s texts and lack of understanding of them killed his promising “hero” character arc.

When the readers first meet John, he is in Malpais, and after being introduced to the World State and the way of life for the people in the World State in a previous chapter, we see him develop as a character incredibly. Upon being told that he’s coming to the World State, John, in a conversation with Bernard says,

“O wonder!” he was saying; and his eyes shone, his face was brightly flushed. “How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!”
…
“O brave new world,” he repeated. “O brave new world that has such people in it. Let’s start at once.”” (Huxley 139)

This quote emphasizes to readers John’s naivety. When John says, “O brave new world,” and “O brave new world that has such people in it…”, he is comparing himself to Miranda, who originally utters the quote in the Shakespearean play, The Tempest, wherein Prospero, a banished king and the father of Miranda, seeks to use his daughter to re-establish his power. Miranda and her father have been exiled from their homeland, and Miranda first utters this quote upon meeting people who look like herself for the first time. She doesn’t know who they are and what they will bring, but she is naive and has grown up under the influence of her father, so she is excited to meet them. Similarly, John repeats these words exactly, saying, “O wonder” and “How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!” As someone with Fordian DNA, he does not look like the rest of the people in Malpais, and other than his mother, Lenina, and Bernard are the first other people he has seen who look like him. He was always ostracized by the people in Malpais and was excited to meet Bernard and Lenina. Like Miranda, shown by the way his “eyes shone” and “his face was brightly flushed”, John is excited and optimistic about these “goodly creatures” and the world they will take him to, despite not knowing that Bernard is using him for his own social advancement, or anything else about them. Well-known to the readers of the Tempest but not Miranda, the people she sees are the ones who banished her and her father in the first place, and the statement when she refers to the “goodly creatures” is one of naivety. From Miranda’s story, John should have learned to not trust people right away, however, he does not understand what Miranda was saying actually meant, and it showed his naivety as much as it did hers. However, after spending some time in the World State, John says, “”O brave new world … O brave new world that has/ such people in it.”” (Huxley 160), once again. However, he repeats this same quote not with optimism, but disgust, after being horrified by the sight of the Bokanovsky twins, a symbol of the extreme conformity and degradation of what is natural that is considered normal in the World State. In uttering this quote for the second time, John overcomes his initial naivety and optimism and expresses the same view as the reader. The reader, who knows several more chapters of the circumstances in the World State, yearns for a hero, and John’s character development of overcoming his naivety makes him the expected candidate for the hero.

Next, as John spends more time in the World State, in seeing what happens there, he develops a stronger and stronger dislike for the State. Shown by his horror upon seeing the fertilization center and the Bokanovsky twins, he finds himself in utter disagreement with the values of the World State. For an outlet to express his disagreement with the state, he turns to Shakespeare. However, the extreme way in which he follows Shakespeare causes him to orphan his original purpose. An example of this is the following scene,

“Damned whore!”
“A gra-amme is be-etter …” she began.
…
“Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet.” The inexorable rhythm beat itself out. “Impudent …” (Huxley, 194)

In this scene, John yells “Damned whore!” at Lenina after she tries to “solve” her attraction towards him, which she thinks he shares, by initiating sex with John, something she defaults to because of her conditioning that has turned her away from the possibility of a below the surface connection with another person. However, John, who does share this attraction, pushes her away, slaps her, and threatens to kill her if she doesn’t get out of his sight. He then calls her an “impudent strumpet”, likening himself to Othello from the Shakespearean play, Othello. In Othello, the main character, Othello utters this phrase after being told that his wife, Desdemona, has cheated on him by a man who seeks revenge against him, Iago. Othello enters a jealous rampage and, as copied by John, repeats the phrase “impudent strumpet” over and over in reference to his unfaithful wife and then slaps her before ultimately killing her, and then himself. This play, along with the others John has read, is idealized by John for the intensity of emotion they contain. This desire for intensity has caused him to model his life and follow, like the law, the words of the tragic Shakespearean characters, such as Othello. His recurring flaw, however, is his lack of understanding of these plays. Othello’s wife Desdemona, was in fact, not cheating on him, and loved him very much, and the claim that she was cheating on him, was instead the result of a plan drafted by Iago to take revenge on Othello. Othello is consumed by his jealousy and cannot see anything else, and ends up killing a well-intentioned woman who loves him and ruining his own life. After this, out of guilt, Othello kills himself. However, John does not understand this and ends up doing the same thing by putting the expectations for Shakespearean characters on Lenina, a woman of the World State, who has been conditioned towards sex and away from meaningful relationships, and ends up hurting a well-intentioned woman who loves him. While the emotions of the moment might be intense, they are not any more meaningful than easy sex or soma. John is unable to understand this because of his strange treatment of Shakespeare. Normally, when people consume stories including fictional characters, they relate their own emotions to those of the characters. John, however, takes on the emotions of the fictional characters and acts as they do, without relating them to anything. He is extreme in his following of Shakespeare, and it ends up being like conditioning. Huxley draws attention to this by referring to the words of Othello that John repeats as an “inexorable rhythm” that “beat itself out”, as opposed to his own thoughts and emotions. The actions of Othello he adopted did not come from him, it “beat itself out” and seemed to be something he was following out of nature, as it was inexorable. Huxley draws further attention to this by comparing him spitting out the words of Othello, to Lenina trying to diffuse the situation by repeating the hypnopaedic phrase, “A gra-amme is be-etter …”. For both of them, their courses of action come from somewhere other than within themselves, and, while intense, the events in this scene are not deeper than surface level. However, he is not completely consumed by his conditioning, as unlike Othello with Desdemona, he does not kill Lenina nor himself in this scene.

As John spends more and more time in the World State, he relies more and more on Shakespeare. If Shakespeare was a drug, John was previously a mild addict, whereas now, he gradually developed into a complete junkie, in that his dose of Shakespeare is much higher than his dose of reality. Shakespeare is in every action he takes and every decision he makes. This is shown in this scene,
The young woman stood, smiling at him-an uncertain, imploring, almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers.
“We-want-the whip! We-want-the whip!”
…
“Strumpet!” The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. “Fitchew!”
Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords. (Huxley 257)

As previously mentioned, during the earlier stages of his appearances as a character in this book, shows his naivety by likening himself to another naive character, Miranda. He is not able to understand that Miranda and he are both very naive. However, he overcomes this after seeing the reality of the world he is actually in, and becomes aware of his previous misunderstanding. However, as he grows more extreme, he is unable to do this. In this scene, John has exiled himself from the rest of the civilized world in order to distance himself from the culture of smothering oneself with pleasure. Lenina finds out where he is and approaches him with an “an uncertain, imploring, almost abject smile”, perhaps implying that she has gotten over her conditioned aversion to a deeper connection and comes with good intentions hoping to engage in a relationship deeper than physical, because through her feelings which have persisted through his exile, something that is unnatural for relationships of the World State and for feelings that are purely physical, she has come to the realization that her feelings are beyond attraction. Huxley also describes her in this scene as displaying a facial expression of “yearning distress” upon seeing John, showing how she knows she is acting out of norm. Overall, she likely comes without intentions that are against his, which are supposedly to not engage in easy pleasure. They look at eachother, and “Her [Lenina’s] lips moved, she was saying something” but while she was, there was a mob of people from the World State around him, as a reporter had turned him into a source of entertainment for them, were chanting, “We-want-the whip! We-want-the whip!” So, John can see that her lips are moving, but cannot hear what she is saying. Without listening to her, he calls her a “strumpet” and a “fitchew”, both of which he pulls from Othello when Othello is addressing his seemingly unfaithful wife and then whips Lenina, in the same way that Othello ends up smothering his wife to death. John does this because to him, Lenina is a physical desire of his, and he thinks of her as a whore/easy pleasure, so he considers her his enemy. This shows his lack of development as a character because unlike how, after likening himself to Miranda and then being shown reality, he realizes both Miranda’s and his own naivety, he doesn’t understand that Othello killed his wife because he was acting on a jealous rage induced by lies, and by not allowing his wife to speak for herself, he kills a woman who loves him for no reason. John is so obsessed with this intensity of emotion that he is trying to synthesize in his life, that he does not realize that due to conditioning, Lenina cannot be classified as neither a “strumpet” nor a prude by the Shakespearean definitions. He fails to realize the faulty impulsiveness of both his and Othello’s actions. Instead, he doubles down on them. In the same way that Othello impulsively acts on the lies due to his jealousy, John fails to resist the mob of people around his chanting for the whip and lashes Lenina, due to the fact that he thinks of Lenina as a whore, despite the fact that she cannot be one, and is likely there to turn over a new leaf. Similarly, Desdemona did not cheat on Othello. He was also striking at his own flesh with the whip, shouting, “Kill it, kill it!” (Huxley 258), in an attempt to punish himself for his attraction to Lenina, effectively replacing one physical sensation with another, becoming even more similar to the people he detests so much. Additionally, in the same way that Othello fails to overcome stereotypes associated with being a moor and them being hot-headed and impulsive, John, by lashing out at Lenina in the way that he did, only proved his savagery to the people of the World State. Lastly, although never explicitly stated, it’s highly likely that John ends up whipping Lenina to death, as shown by the fact that he continued to whip her, even as she was “that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet” (Huxley 258). Huxley refers to her writhing body as an “incarnation of turpitude” to point out John’s rage-induced, exaggerated view of her and uses “that” to describe her, turning her into an object to show how John is doing this because his view of Lenina, combined with the mob around him chanting has caused him this incredible rage which has misconstrued his perspective of reality. Furthering the comparison to Othello, Lenina’s body is described as lying in heathers, a plant known for being commonly found in moors. Similarly, a central part of Othello was that Othello himself was a moor. In the morning, John wakes with a horrified “Oh, my God, my God!” (Huxley 259) realizing what he has done. He realizes the extent to which he’s lost his original purpose and hates himself for being caught up in the chanting of the others and ends up killing himself out of regret. In trying to separate himself from the unthinking, hedonistic who were ruled by their conditioning people of the World State, he became, thanks to his unintelligent interpretation of Shakespeare, an unthinking masochist who was ruled only by the actions of Shakespearean characters, making it impossible for him to be a hero. Even though this death is born as a result of independent realization, he is too deep in, and ends up dying in the same way Othello did, for no reason and having achieved nothing.

To conclude, John’s hero arc is derailed by his misinterpretation of Shakespeare’s plays. Although this issue always existed in John, it worsened when his dislike of the World State caused him to shut out others and immerse himself in the plays. However, he took it too far and instead of learning from the stories, he made them law. Through John’s character arc, Huxley provides an interesting tale about extremes showing that in trying to back away as far away from the World State as possible, the World State ended up right behind him, rendering him unable to be a hero. John’s misunderstanding of Shakespeare here ends up being the end of his beginning as a hero and the beginning of his end. This shows that when strongly disagreeing, it’s more effective to seek an understanding than it’s to distance yourself.