A Brave New World Quote Analysis

“Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west…” (Huxley, 259). John’s body dangled, lifeless, from the ceiling of the light house. This scene is the conclusion of Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World. Huxley creates a dystopian society called the World State where the people are created in laboratories with certain genetically manipulated characteristics that fit their place in the caste system. This caste system is composed of Alphas, the highest level, Betas, Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons, in their respective order. The government uses this caste system along with sleep teaching and conditioning to control the people of the world state.

The people of the world state are sleep taught with specific slogans like “Ending is better than mending.” (Huxley, 52) and conditioned to hate certain things like flowers and books. After the children heard a loud siren playing repeatedly when in the presence of the roses and books they began to associate the feeling of terror with them. “The biological nightmares of Brave New World span the entire human life cycle from conception, maturation, and adulthood to death.” (Clayton, 1). John, however, is from the reservation, a place that has yet to be affected by the world state’s influence, including its technology and ideas. The reservation has no true system for control except basic laws set in place to keep total chaos at bay. There is no such thing as sleep teaching or conditioning for the use of government control in the reservation. Seeing as John is from the reservation, when he is introduced to the world state’s policies and methods he is confused and appalled by what he witnesses. He is vastly different from the people of the world state and refuses to conform to their rules by choosing to follow his own personal beliefs and moral code. John is seen as more of an experiment rather than a person, the world state uses him to see how he would react in their world and how quickly they can get him to accept their mindset and conform. However, this experiment fails when

Whether it’s the way he acts with Lenina, his love interest, or the way he refuses to take their widely accepted drug of choice, soma, he exudes free will and individual thought process. One of the World states' societal rules is that everybody belongs to everybody so there are no monogamous relationships, when John develops feelings for Lenina and she for him, things get a little complicated. Lenina tries to persuade John to take part in sexual relations with her while he wants to wait to develop their emotional relationship first which goes against what the world state abdicates for. Taking the drug soma is another prevalent societal standard the world state encourages, one that John does not like or participate in due to this being the cause of his mother’s death. John believes it to be “poison to the soul as well as body” (Huxley, 211) and states this opinion multiple times after his mother’s death occurs. He even hides himself away in a lighthouse to live in isolation and punish himself for being a part of the world state. But the isolation aspect does not work due to his self-punishment and mutilation methods, making him famous among the world state with hordes of people crowding around his lighthouse to watch him whip himself. However right before John kills himself, he