Because Brave New World is both fantasy and mockery, Huxley's characters are both fantastic and cynical. They are exaggerated because the year is A.F. 632; they offer a caustic commentary because more often than not they express what we must recognize are twentieth century viewpoints. At this time (1931) Huxley was completely disillusioned with mankind and with its choice of values or lack of values - he saw no hope for man's ultimate salvation of himself. He expresses his pessimism by offering no glimmer of hope in his novel. None of his characters is able to change or to bring about change.
Director Of Hatcheries And Conditioning
The Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is the first character we meet; the novel opens with the Director taking a group of students on a tour of the Centre. Note that the Director (Tomakin) is, with but two exceptions, always referred to as the Director. This emphasis on the "function" of the man is appropriate since his primary concern is the production of automatons to populate the Brave New World.
The Director is an Alpha-plus, and because of the importance of his position we might well assume that he is a very intelligent and capable man. His comments during the tour indicate that he is efficient, very businesslike, somewhat officious, and very much concerned with conformity - "The primal and the ultimate need. Stability." In fact, when the World Controller mentions history (a forbidden subject), the Director is somewhat taken aback; he recalls with some dismay the rumors that old forbidden books were hidden in a safe in the Controller's study.
Perhaps one reason Huxley portrays the Director as very conventional and scrupulously correct is to stress the irony of the Director's unconventional behavior apparent in his previous relationship with Linda. Imagine the horror and confusion he felt when everyone realizes that he is a father (horrible word). Because the Director had disgraced himself by the impropriety of his actions, he resigns. Bernard becomes a kind of hero, and we hear nothing of the Director again.
DIRECTOR OF HATCHERIES AND CONDITIONING The Director opens the novel by explaining the reproductive system of the brave new world, with genetically engineered babies growing in bottles. He loves to throw "scientific data" at his listeners so quickly that they can't understand them; he is a know-it-all impressed with his own importance. In fact, he knows less and is less important than the Controller, as you see when he is surprised that the Controller dares to talk about two forbidden topics- history and biological parents. The Director comes alive only when he confesses to Bernard Marx that as a young man he went to a Savage Reservation, taking along a woman who disappeared there. She was pregnant with his baby, as a result of what the Utopia considers an obscene accident. The baby grows up to be John; his return to London leads to the total humiliation of the Director. The Director's name is Thomas, but you learn this only because Linda, his onetime lover and John's mother, keeps referring to him as Tomakin. -
Henry Foster
One of the standard men and women who work at the Hatchery, Henry is proud of his work. He is efficient, intelligent, and, most important, "conventional." Henry does everything he is expected to do and does it well - in every way he is an ideal citizen of the World State. In the bureaucracy of the World State he is the young man "with a future" - he knows what is expected of him and does it. Henry Foster would not be classified as an important character in the novel since he does not initiate or determine action - he is most often seen as Lenina's sometime lover. He has all of the facts and statistics of conditioning and hatchery memorized.
HENRY FOSTER Henry is a scientist in the London Hatchery, an ideal citizen of the world state: efficient and intelligent at work, filling his leisure time with sports and casual sex. He is not an important character but helps Huxley explain the workings of the Hatchery, show Lenina's passionless sex life, and explore the gulf between Bernard and the "normal" citizens of Utopia.
Mustapha Mond, A World Controller
As one of the ten World Controllers, Mustapha Mond provides considerable information about the creation and maintenance of the World State. He is an intelligent, capable, good-natured man whose dedication and ability we must admire even if we do not approve. His comments at the beginning of the novel, when he meets the Director and the students provide not only information about his role in the World State but also reveal something of his character.
The World Controller is one of the most important characters because he is the most intelligent and the most knowledgeable - he has read and studied the Bible, Shakespeare, history, philosophy (all forbidden books). As a young Alpha-plus, his own unconventionality necessitated a choice between life on an island (reserved for those who were "too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life") and life in the World State (being "taken on the Controller's Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership.") Because the Controller has freedom of choice - a freedom which conditioning normally inhibits or destroys - he is one of the few real individuals we meet in this novel.
In the latter part of the novel the conversation between the Controller and John the Savage is the device Huxley uses to "put across" his own ideas and concerns. When the Controller explains his values and beliefs, his arguments and explanations are clearly and logically presented; his sanity makes the insanity of the Brave New World all the more vivid and frightening. The Controller in many ways represents the intelligent, capable individual who uses his intelligence and capability for unworthy ends.
THE CONTROLLER, MUSTAPHA MOND Mond is one of the ten people who control the World State. He is good-natured and dedicated to his work, and extremely intelligent; he understands people and ideas that are different, which most Utopians cannot do. He has read such forbidden books as the works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and knows history and philosophy. Indeed, he resembles the Oxford professors that Huxley knew, and his discussion of happiness with the Savage resembles a tutorial between an Oxford don and his most challenging student. Once a gifted scientist, the Controller made a conscious choice as a young man to become one of the rulers instead of a troublesome dissident. He is one of the few Utopians who can choose, who has free will, and this makes him more rounded and more attractive than most of the characters you'll meet in the book. It also makes him concerned with morality, but he uses his moral force and his sanity for the immoral and insane goals of the Utopia. You may decide that he is the most dangerous person in Brave New World.
Bernard Marx
Member of the psychology Bureau of the Central London Hatchery. Because he is different, Bernard is the source of considerable speculation and suspicion. He does not enjoy sports (everyone is expected to); he likes to be alone (others like crowds); he is unhappy (everybody else is happy). Bernard doesn't know why he is dissatisfied, why he is different; this which is rumored to be caused by an accidental dosage of alcohol into his blood surrogate while he was still in the tube.
When we first meet Bernard we see him as a rebel, a protestor, "an individual." He wants to stand up for his rights, to battle against the order of things. We later learn that Bernard questions the conformity of life in the World State and the values it teaches, but that his dissatisfaction seems to stem from his not being accepted. When he returns from the Reservation with John and Linda, he becomes a kind of hero, the girls who formerly ignored him become attentive, important personages in the World State curry his favor, and Bernard is happy and enthusiastic about his life in the World State.
Huxley indicates that Bernard's protest is not intellectual or moral, but personal and social; he willingly accepts life in the World State when he is accepted. When the novel ends we find that Bernard's fortunes have changed and he is to be deported to Iceland because of his nonconformity. Bernard protests his innocence, begs the World Controller to reconsider, and finally is carried out still shouting and sobbing.
BERNARD MARX A specialist in sleep-teaching, Bernard does not fit the uniformity that usually characterizes all members of the same caste. He is an Alpha of high intelligence and therefore a member of the elite, but he is small and therefore regarded as deformed. Other people speculate that too much alcohol was put into his bottle when he was still an embryo. He dislikes sports and likes to be alone, two very unusual traits among Utopians. When he first appears, he seems to dislike casual sex, another departure from the norm. He is unhappy in a world where everyone else is happy. At first Bernard seems to take pleasure in his differentness, to like being a nonconformist and a rebel. Later, he reveals that his rebellion is less a matter of belief than of his own failure to be accepted. When he returns from the Savage Reservation with John, he is suddenly popular with important people and successful with women, and he loves it. Underneath, he has always wanted to be a happy member of the ruling class. In the end, he is exiled to Iceland and protests bitterly.
Lenina Crowne
Young and pretty, Lenina is very popular as a sex partner, but she sometimes finds living the motto "Everybody belongs to everybody else" a little tiring. She is a happy, contented, well-adjusted citizen of the World State; she accepts its teachings and values without question. The only disconcerting element in her life is the frustration brought about by her feelings for John the Savage. Lenina finds John attractive and attempts without success to seduce him. She cannot understand his attitude regarding sex even as he cannot understand hers. Fortunately she, like the others, can escape most frustrations and unhappiness by taking Soma.
Lenina is a fairly important character because she is instrumental in bringing about the suicide of John the Savage, although we cannot in any way blame her. (She is a product of the system, and the system is wrong.) Because she is a beautiful, desirable woman, she personifies for John the conflict between the body and the spirit. In a way she repeats the conflict he felt regarding his mother - he is at one and the same time attracted and repelled by the object of his affections. She develops an infatuation for John.
LENINA CROWNE Lenina is young and pretty despite having lupus, an illness that causes reddish-brown blotches to appear on her skin. She is, like Henry Foster, a happy, shallow citizen, her one idiosyncracy is the fact that she sometimes spends more time than society approves dating one man exclusively. Like all well-conditioned citizens of the World State, Lenina believes in having sex when she wants it. She can't understand that John avoids sex with her because he loves her and does not want to do something that he thinks- in his old-fashioned, part-Indian, part-Christian, part-Shakespearean way- will dishonor her. She embodies the conflict he feels between body and spirit, between love and lust. Lenina is more a cartoon character than a real person, but she triggers John's emotional violence and provides the occasion for his suicide when she comes to see him whip himself.
Helmholtz Watson
Intellectually, socially, and physically the ideal of his Alpha-plus caste, Helmholtz is regarded with some suspicion by his associates because he is too perfect. Like Bernard he questions the conformity of life in the World State and the values it teaches, but, unlike Bernard, his dissatisfaction stems from his feeling that there must be more to life than mere physical existence. Although not as important to the development of the novel as Bernard, Helmholtz is in many ways a more admirable character because, instead of simply talking about what he believed, he acted. Throughout the story, he feels as though he has the power to say something important, and yet he doesn't know what to say.
As noted earlier, in this novel Huxley expressed his pessimism regarding man and his ability to save himself; consequently none of the characters is able to bring about change. However, Helmholtz is at least willing to try. When the Savage tries to tell the people they are being controlled, Helmholtz joins forces with the Savage when a melee breaks out. Later he accepts his banishment with considerable aplomb and asks that he be sent to a cold climate since he feels such discomfort might aid his writing.
HELMHOLTZ WATSON Helmholtz, like Bernard, is different from the average Alpha-plus intellectual. A mental giant who is also successful in sports and sex, he's almost too good to be true. But he is a nonconformist who knows that the world is capable of greater literature than the propaganda he writes so well- and that he is capable of producing it. When John the Savage introduces him to Shakespeare, Helmholtz only appreciates half of it; despite his genius, he's still limited by his Utopian upbringing. He remains willing to challenge society even if he can't change it, and accepts exile to the bleak Falkland Islands in the hope that physical discomfort and the company of other dissidents will stimulate his writing.
Linda was left behind to live on the savage reservation when she accidentally got pregnant. She is disliked by civilization because of her old aged body-, which is something the civilization has never been exposed to.
LINDA Linda is John's mother, a Beta minus who sleeps with the Director and becomes pregnant accidentally, 20 years before the action of the book begins. She falls while visiting a Savage Reservation, becomes unconscious, and remains lost until the Director has to leave. She is then rescued by Indians, gives birth to John, and lives for 20 years in the squalor of the Reservation, where she grows old, sick, and fat without the medical care that keeps people physically young in the Utopia. Behaving according to Utopian principles, she sleeps with many of the Indians on the Reservation and never understands why the women despise her or why the community makes John an outcast. When she returns to London, she takes ever-increasing doses of soma and stays perpetually high- until the drug kills her.
John The Savage
A curious mixture of the "old" world and the "new," John does not belong to either. He is not accepted by the Savages on the Reservation because he is "different," and he cannot and will not accept the life and values of the Other Place (London). Like Bernard, Helmholtz, and Linda, he doesn't belong - he is an alien, a misfit, a "mistake." John was born in the savage reservations. His mother is Linda and his father is Thomas, the director of hatchery and conditioning. He does not adjust well to civilization, and is strong in religious beliefs.
John is the most important character in the book because he acts as a bridge between the two cultures, and having known both "ways of life" he is able to compare them and comment on them. His beliefs and values are a curious mixture of Christian and heathen, of "Jesus and Pookong," but, most important, he has a strict moral code. His "old fashioned" beliefs about God and right and wrong (his beliefs closely duplicate Christian morality) contrast sharply with the values and beliefs of the citizens of the Brave New World ("God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness"). It is this conflict between the two value systems that ultimately brings about his suicide.
When we are first introduced to John and the Reservation Huxley makes us aware of the moral conflict, but he also makes us aware of the social and emotional conflicts. The social conflict results from his not belonging on the Reservation; his mother was the white she-dog despised by the Savages. The emotional conflict results from the attraction and repulsion he feels towards his mother - he loves her but finds her promiscuity revolting. And, too her stories of the Other Place (London) fill him with wonder and a vague discontent.
The arrival at the Reservation of Bernard and Lenina and the Savage's subsequent arrival in London contribute to the conflict he already feels. John is attracted to Lenina but feels that such lustful feelings are wrong and must be repressed; Lenina is attracted to John and cannot understand the Savage's reticence and unwillingness to show any interest in her. Finally when John protests his love and expresses his desire to marry her, Lenina considers such an entanglement absurd and scoffs at the idea. But John is unable to put her out of his mind. His love for her finally breeds hatred, and when this hate turns inward upon himself, the Savage hangs himself.
Like the others in this novel, the character of the Savage is not believable. (Huxley was not interested in creating characters; he was interested in expressing ideas.) The Savage speaks too intelligently and reasons too well for one whose education consisted of reading a few books and talking to practitioners of a combination fertility - Penitente cult. Huxley himself admitted the inconsistency. But if we accept John simply as a spokesman in another of Huxley's novels of ideas, he is more than satisfactory.
JOHN THE SAVAGE John is the son of two members of Utopia, but has grown up on a Savage Reservation. He is the only character who can really compare the two different worlds, and it is through him that Huxley shows that his Utopia is a bad one. John's mother, Linda, became pregnant accidentally, a very unusual event in the brave new world. While she was pregnant, she visited a Savage Reservation, hurt herself in a fall, and got lost, missing her return trip to London. The Indians of the Reservation saved her life and she gave birth to John. The boy grew up absorbing three cultures: the Utopia he heard about from his mother; the Indian culture in which he lived, but which rejected him as an outsider; and the plays of Shakespeare, which he read in a book that survived from pre-Utopian days. John, in short, is different from the other Savages and from the Utopians. He is tall and handsome, but much more of an alien in either world than Bernard is. John looks at both worlds through the lenses of the religion he acquired on the Reservation- a mixture of Christianity and American Indian beliefs- and the old-fashioned morality he learned from reading Shakespeare. His beliefs contradict those of the brave new world, as he shows in his struggle over sex with Lenina and his fight with the system after his mother dies. Eventually, the conflict is too much for him and he kills himself
Fanny Crowne
Lenina's friend that reminds her of the standards and rules of society.
Pope
Linda's lover in the savage reservation.