Brave New World Chapter 1 Quote Analysis

Brave New World is full of many characters who will do everything they can to avoid facing the truth about the truly broken society that they live in. Where they are held captive and convinced that how they live is the only way to achieve happiness. In chapter 7 you meet a boy named John, Bernard and Lenina take him from the savage reservation back to the utopia. John chooses to use Shakespeare as his way to avoid facing his truth and his broken past. Shakespeare plays a big role throughout this book, representing first, the art and ideas that are rejected by the Brave New World in the interest of maintaining stability. Second, the powerful emotion, passion, love, and beauty that’s displayed in Shakespeare's plays. This stands for all of

John is born to a woman named Linda, who would constantly have new men around the household. He would watch his mother get beaten by these men, and then get beaten himself. One of these men was the Pope, John hated him especially. The Pope would bring Linda alcoholic beverages, which caused John to grow up very lonely. “To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow . . .” (136) This quote used specifically describes his feelings and finding of his spirituality when he spent most of his childhood alone. “He had discovered Time and Death and God.” (136) This is a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth says this shortly after his wife's death and shortly before his own. John is using Macbeth's words to express the fact that he believes life is

Citizens support it because they’ve traded their freedom for happiness after two 9 year wars. John, however, realizes that their society is seriously corrupted. “Whether ‘tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them . . .” (238) This is a close quote from a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. John uses this quote in an attempt to make the point that Utopia has just taken an easy way out of things. They have ended suffering altogether, so that thinking about the tragedies of life is not needed, which is exactly what Hamlet is doing