How Is Brave New World Morally Ambiguous

Everyone in the real world is ambiguous. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, three of his characters show realistic moral ambiguity. This concept is when an individual is not a clear protagonist or antagonist. These characters often fail to obey societal standards and lash out, painting them as antagonists; however, they also show love and real human needs, allowing the reader to empathize with them. Moral ambiguity is important because it shows humanity in fiction. Huxley writes his characters without moral clarity to prove that people in the real world are never completely good or bad. Linda is morally ambiguous because she does everything as she is told and is scrutinized nonetheless. She follows every rule with the exception of

He is arguably the most outcasted character in the novel. Aside from Linda, every character outside of the reservation has been subjected to conditioning. The children in the reservation are unconditioned, but their parents are as well. John is an unconditioned savage being raised by a beta-minus woman. He is an outcast in both the reservation and the civilized world. Like Linda, John is short-tempered and takes out his frustrations on innocent people. This is shown on page 207 when he pushes a child out of anger. “The savage looked down at him and still without speaking pushed him away. The twin fell on the floor and at once began to howl. The Savage did not even look round.” (Huxley 207). John is angered easily because he wants very little in life, but his wants are deemed too much. It is unusual for people in this story to want someone to stay alive. This is why ‘death conditioning’ is important to them. It teaches detachment from individuals. “When the individual feels, the community reels.” (Huxley 94). In their society’s view, no human being is important enough for somebody to miss, and when John expresses this natural emotion, he is portrayed as an antagonist that pushes children and delays their conditioning process. Moreover, the reader has a difficult time differentiating whether or not John is ‘the good