LITERATURE ANALYSIS #5

I chose to do my literature analysis on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

1) The exposition of this novel starts with developing the World State, a society in the future where there is no families or love, and humans are mass-produced and assigned to different ranks. The novel starts with a group of students touring the Hatchery, where the humans are produced. We are introduced to Lenina, who having relations with a man named Henry Foster. Wanting to explore other men, Lenina accepts a man named Benard's invitation to go to a Savage Reserve. When Benard goes to ask the Director for permission to visit the reserve, the Director tells him a story about a woman that he lost while he took a trip there. On the reservation, Lenina and Bernard encounter Savages, whose life-styles vary widely from theirs. They meet Linda, the woman the Director had relations with, and her son John who they bring back to the World State in an attempt to embarrass the Director. The society finds Linda a disgust, but John mildly amusing, though he grows to hate the society's morals and ideals. Lenina begins to develop feelings for John and attempts to seduce him, but John is so digested by her actions and her willingness to engage in premarital sex that he chases her away. He runs to the hospital, where he watches Linda die from her continued overdosage of soma. He becomes furious, especially because no one seems to care that Linda has passed, and holds a free-soma riot along with Bernard's friend Helmholtz, which lands them all, including Bernard, in the Controller's office, enemies of the State. John and the Controller debate the state of the society and John chooses to not follow Bernard and Helmholtz to the island they are sent to. He instead takes refuge in an abandoned light house, where he is free to take part in the rituals of his old life. This fascinated the World State members, who come to watch him and eventually push him towards suicide, ending the novel.

2) The major theme is "The Incompatibility of Happiness and Truth." This theme majorly becomes evident through the Controller and Johns debate about the problems of the World State's ideals. In creating humans, the top leaders program the children so that they do not fully experience emotions, both the positive and negative sides of them. They are not taught how to love, but instead taught to pleasure themselves through as many sexual partners as they please, saying "Everyone belongs to everyone." The Controllers do this because they have realized that when people are aware of suffering and aware that they could be "something more," they will never truly be happy. By developing people to want nothing more then the social class they are assigned to, people don't know that there is more to life than what they know, and therefore are content.

3) The tone of the novel is Dramatic/ Parodic. Certain scenes of the novel are very dark and intense, but at the same time in a sense mocking our society. Many of the ideas/ concepts of the novel are so ridiculous you almost can't help but laugh, though in the novel there is no humor in their context. In part 2 of Ch 5 (Page 85) Bernard takes part in a "Orgy-porgy," which is so ridiculous you have to laugh. " 'Orgy-porgy,' the dancers caught up in the liturgical refrain, 'Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls...' " Another example in Ch 13 is when Lenina makes a mistake when developing the embryos and the text reads "Twenty-two years, eight months, and four days from that moment, a promising young Alpha-Minus administrator at Mwanza-Mwanza was to die of trypanosomiasis." A last example is Ch 2 when the Director talks to the new students about mothers. " 'Humans used to be...' he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. 'Well they used to be quite viviparous.' "

4) 
1. Allusion:  
There are a few examples of allusion in the novel.  Many of the slogans implanted on the citizens minds are corrupted versions of things said in society today.  Examples would be “A gramme in time saves nine,” or, “A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away.”  

2. Satire:  
Satire is doubtlessly the most prominent literary element in the novel.  The entire premise for the plot is a criticism of values that Huxley observed society of his time was heading towards.  Huxley sarcastically addresses the consumer-driven world of today, saying “Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption.  It’s madness.  Nowadays the Controllers won’t approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.”  

3. Setting:“A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.” Through the harsh description of the setting of Brave New World comes to characterize the surrounding World State society as well as its values of: COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

4. Rhyming scheme/Free Rhyme verse: “Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted! Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted? Skies are blue inside of you, The weather's always fine; For There ain't no Bottle in all the world Like that dear little Bottle of mine.” Not long enough to qualify as a sonnet, the rhyming scheme however cleverly creates a catchy means by which readers can get the sense that even their “folk-songs” are merely propagandist spirituals.

5. Figurative Language:
Throughout the novel Huxley uses animal names to refer to the members of the World State, which you can take to mean negatively. He uses the names of birds and insects to get across the idea that, like animals, the people have no feelings or compassion that drive them, only instincts.

6. Connotation:
The connotation of the morals and ideals that we see in different charters in the World State helps readers to understand which of these characters would be found socially acceptable or not. We agree more with John's ideals, but in the World State the connotations of his beliefs lead him to be an outcast.

7. Foil:
In many ways John acts as a foil to Bernard. Though they both question the social norm, Bernard is all talk and thoughts while John is all action. Bernard is intelligent and can change himself to fit into the World State, while John is all emotion and passion and can not seem to change his ideals so that he is not an outcast.

8. Point of View:
Depending on your point of view, you also can see the main characters like John and Bernard in several different lights. John can easily be seen as a heroic fighter for morality and compassion, as well as an emotional idiot who has the right ideas but the wrong ways of making an impact with those ideas.

9. Personification:
“The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters.” Huxley at times engages in beautiful bouts of imagery laden figurative language to juxtapose the otherwise cruel and grey atmosphere of the novel. The personification in this passage with the soliquizing flowers and drowsy air, creates a mood contrasting with the overall foreboding feeling of oppression prevalent in the book.

10. Tone:
 “The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Cold, clinical the tone of Brave New World is sterile in it’s diction, even the similes/figurative language set an overall mood of a dead humanity. 

CHARACTERIZATION:


1) Direct Characterization for Bernard: "The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects." Direct Characterization of Helmholtz "...Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him." 
Both Bernard and Helmholtz are directly states as outsiders, which gives readers the lasting impression that they are different from the other members of the society.
Indirect Characterization of John the Savage takes place when he rejects Lenina's invitation of sex, which shows he is truly against the morals of the society, even the things that appeal to him on even a physical level. Indirect Characterization of Henry takes place when he flies extremely close to the ocean,  which shows that he is deep down against the World State ideals as well, but does t have the right outlet for his feelings and is afraid to truly show his ideas and be punished.

2. "Anywhere. I don't care. So long as I can be alone,""But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, i want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin,"In these two examples we see a shift in the syntax of John the Savage's speech. Instead of speaking in eloquent sentences, his speech becomes short and almost exasperated. It conveys a quickened pace and it almost seems as if he is out of breath. It strongly reflects the idea that there is so much running though his mind and that all of his senses are overloading and becoming too difficult to process.

3) It could be argued that there is several different protagonists to this play, but the major one would be John the Savage. John grows up on the reservation, and therefore has certain ideas about love, sex, religion, compassion, and what his meaning in life is. I would argue that John is in some ways a static character because though he is opened up to many different ideas through his time in the World State, in the end he has the same ideas about what is right and wrong.


4) At the end of the book I mostly came away feeling like I met characters because what takes place in the book is so far-fetched its really hard to imagine anyone thinking and feeling that way, though Huxley does a great job of making it realistic. An example is the conformation between Lenina and John, where she is desperately trying to seduce him while he violently tried to fight his urges.