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Showing posts from February, 2019

The Islands of Brave New World

As a class, we have finished reading Brave New World. However, I would like to look back at the Islands of the world. The author, Aldous Huxley, did not write anything regarding how Bernard or Helmholtz lived their lives at the island after they were exiled. Instead, he mainly focused on John.  Previously in chapter 15-16, we learned quite a bit about the islands. The Islands of the world were seemingly disconnected from the rest of society and served as a prison-like area for people who did not conform to the social norms of the "civilized" world. For example, Iceland and the Falkland Islands were mentioned in the book as punishment islands.  We can see that the typical person of Brave New World is absolutely terrified of being sent to an island, in the early chapters when the director threatens to send Bernard to Iceland, he expresses his concerns to Lenina and is terrified of being sent there. Later on, when the world controller Mustafa Mond talks about his pa

Deciphering Bernard

In Huxley's Brave New World , Bernard Marx is known as an Elite Alpha, working below only the Director and Controller. He is engineered to be one of the most intelligent and cultured individuals in society, but we quickly realize Bernard is not like his peers, being abnormally secretive about his thoughts and actions. Fortunately, the novel is narrated from a third person perspective, giving us access to Bernard's unfiltered thoughts in real-time. From these glimpses, it is possible to infer a lot about his character. We are first introduced to Bernard through the thoughts of others. Described as having "...that unsavory reputation" (25) and spending "...most of his time by himself-alone" (32), Bernard is already set as an outcast in a society where everyone is engineered to not be one. The idea of being alone is almost non-existent, so when Bernard is portrayed as someone who deviates from that ideology, he is called out. He reinforces this idea when aske