ENOCK MGENDI
English essay Brave New World: It is the way the character changes in a text that makes it worth reading.
Intro
· Often, the development and progression of a character are how readers can sympathise with a character or develop an intense emotional experience.
· Aldous Huxley's riveting novel, Brave New World depicts a futuristic, utopian society in which characters are oppressed and forced to love their pre-natal intelligence assignment.
· Individuals have no emotions in this world where drugs and promiscuous sex are greatly encouraged.
· The two protagonists, Bernard Marx and John the savage, both demonstrate how trying to adapt to society can be futile.
· While Bernard Marx claims to thrive on being different, an individual and an opposing force in the New World, he is sadly exposed by Huxley as someone who wants to assimilate.
· John the savage refuses to change, but the forces of the New World make it almost impossible.
· The way that these two characters change makes it worth reading. Interesting enough a minor character who is more one dimensional, Lenina Crownie undergoes a change in character towards the end of the novel make the text worth reading as she reflects expected social norms throughout most of the novel.
Bp1
· Bernard Marx an Alpha plus, a specialist in sleep teaching, is an example of a character that changes in the brave new word.
· He changes from a character that symbolised individuality to a character that just wanted to belong to the society desperately.
· At the beginning of the novel the alpha plus seemed to be very different from the society, he acts like a rebel trying to battle against the order of things. He seemed to be an "individual" in the first few chapters.
· On his first date with Lenina, he says "I'd rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly".
· He desires to separate himself from the rest of the society. However, as we go further into the novel we see that his root concern is to be socially acceptable and not really about becoming an individual.
· In chapter six Bernard shows signs of changing his character. When the Director summoned Bernard to his office for being a nonconformist, Bernard goes on to brag to his friend Helmholtz Watson on his victory over the director when he says, "I simply told him to go to the bottomless past and marched out of the room and that was that".
· We get the sense that Bernard's victory was not so much about personal integrity as it was social acceptance.
· His desire to be different was from accepting a situation that he could not control, but his conditioning to conform is at the deep root of his psyche and follows the state motto of ‘Community, identity, stability'.
· Finally, his character undergoes a complete change when he uproots Linda and John from the savage reservation into the utopian society. We get the sense that Bernard's victory was not so much about personal integrity as it was social acceptance.
· "I wonder if you...
