BNW ESSAY DRAFT 1

Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using
characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender,
race, class, or creed. Choose a play or novel (BRAVE NEW WORLD)
in which such a character plays a significant role, and show how that 
character’s alienation reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions and 
moral values. 
         

          In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, an outsider from civilization is idolized but alienated at the same time. He is idolized because he is different and he is alienated because he is different. This outsider is John, the Savage. He was born on the reservation where marriage and God and families are considered normal. Society today considers these practices normal. But in the civilized society in the book, these are appalling and disgusting and unheard of practices. They have been conditioned to think in this way. John never had this conditioning, so he sees everything that they do as cynical and strange.

            The way that John is addressed in the book changes periodically. The author will either refer to him as the Savage or as John. Same with the other characters, like Bernard. They all don’t understand his way of thinking and his way of life. He is the one person that could potentially break them free of their conditioning and their perfect little bubbles, but the problem is, is that they don’t want to be freed. They are perfectly happy in their soma filled worlds. John doesn’t understand how they can feel at ease with life with their lack of human emotion. This shows that hypnopaedia did its job. The utopia (or rather, dystopia) had succeeded in what it had intended to do. It had no flaws other than it was hiding the truth about many things from the people of its society. But it is seen as successful because everyone is happy and no one tries to rebel. They can’t rebel, it goes against their conditioning. And again, everything resorts back to hypnopaedia. Teaching babies and children in their sleep about “morals” in life helps their leaders control the population because they teach them whatever they want. When they grow up, the voices in their head are normal and they believe it to be true. They could teach them that the sky is purple and these people would believe that they were living underneath a purple sky their entire lives.

            John’s role in the novel is to show the readers that no outside force can change what hypnopaedia has done to its victims. The conditioning has been so successful that no one can alter their way of thinking. John’s alienation helps to emphasize the fact that even though his way of living may make more sense and be more normal and traditional; these people have gone for so long believing the exact opposite and it isn’t going to change.