Individuality In Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World

In Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, the idea of individuality is explored as the people of the Brave New World are conditioned to act and think in specific ways. When John, originally from the Savage Reservation, is brought into the civilized world, his more complex ways of thinking and outside perspective on the civilized society reveal the conformity of the people. When John is brought to the lighthouse for an experiment, the people of the Brave New World see John as entertainment and enjoy watching him whip himself. In Chapter 18 at the lighthouse, Huxley uses the animal imagery to emphasize John’s individuality and show the lack of individuality among the people living in the Brave New World.
Individuality in Brave New World refers

When the Brave New World people are surrounding John and watching him, they view him as a spectacle for enjoyment. The people begin chanting to John, “We want the whip” because they enjoy seeing him inflict pain on himself. The animal imagery show that the Brave New World people lack identities as individuals and only act as a group: “Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot-fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken, ‘We-- want--the whip.’” (256) The Brave New World people’s lack of individuality is shown when they are yelling to John in “parrot-fashion.” This description of “Parrot-fashion” reveals that these people are repeatedly saying the same phrase in unison, just as a parrots mimic what they hear. The people continuously say this “again and again” showing that they are in agreement because they all continue to want him whip himself as there is “an ever-growing volume of sound”. The description of the people as “parrots” is at its acme when it says that “by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken.” It states earlier in the scene that there are dozens of people watching John, and out of these many people, there is “no other word being spoken.”

The Brave New World people continue to be intrigued by John as they push through each other to be able to watch him. Huxley’s use of animal imagery in this scene calls attention to how the people act the same because they all want to see John whip himself.
Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough… Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them.