Brave New World

Lenina Crowne is an interesting case study within the World State context of Brave New World. She is for the most part a good and conforming member of society; however, within that adherence to the letter of the law, she does still manage to be drawn to people and things outside the norm. She is perfectly happy being almost-monogamous with Foster, until Fanny convinces her that she needs to put forth the effort to be more promiscuous. In that effort, Lenina is drawn to Bernard Marx, the character that no one else can seem to stand.

Lenina is characterized, especially throughout her social interactions, as a sort of vapid adherent to the social conditioning described in the opening chapters, often repeating verbatim the hypnopaedic mantras drilled into her subconscious. And yet she is also shown to be a kind and endearing character, amidst so many others who are not: “Lenina’s laugh was frank and wholly unmalicious” (58). She is eager to please, and, despite her attraction to difference—Marx and John, most notably—she faithfully returns to the vapidity of the hypnopaedic mottos she has been inculcated with.

An in-between character, John finds himself too pale and unworldly for life on the Savage Reservation, where he was born, and thus is shunned by his peers there. However, he is also too wild and free to abide by the World State’s societal structure and rules, once Bernard Marx finds him and brings him and his mother back to civilization. In this way, he shares a similar fate to that of the character type, the “tragic mulatto,” unable to find a home in either culture and thus set adrift and homeless.

As he meets Marx and Lenina, he sees what he thinks could be an escape from the uncomfortable and unwelcoming home he’s known all his life, and yet once he is faced with the mores and ideals of the World State, he finds them no less confusing and hostile. Eventually, driven mad by his lack of options, he hangs himself in the novel’s final scene.

A self-described “Beta” who has “always worked in the Fertilizing Room” (122), Linda is a citizen of the World State, who, twenty odd years before the events of the novel take place, was lost and presumed dead on the New Mexico Savage Reservation, Malpais. As soon as she is removed from the context and support systems of her home and society, her entire life breaks down. She becomes an overweight drunk, who, like her son, becomes exists between two worlds, unable to return to her former civilization, and unable to adapt to life on the reservation.

Mr. Foster is the book’s first named character and seems to be positioned to be an important figure in the novel. He is deemed a man who takes “evident pleasure in quoting figures,” and is shown to be a man the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning relies on and trusts, as he enlists his help during the tour the Director gives of the facility (8). This sentiment is reinforced in Chapter 3, when Fanny, speaking about him to Lenina, says, “Trust Henry Foster to be the perfect gentleman—always correct” (42). He, along with the Director, seems to have fully bought into the social system of the World State and is held up as a paragon of its virtues. As such, he is held in contrast to Bernard Marx, Lenina, and John.

In the opening two chapters, the D.H.C. is not so much a character yet, but rather a conduit for information about the world in which Brave New World is set. However, within that role, the D.H.C. also functions symbolically as a figurehead for the society and its values, becoming a sort of prime example of its citizenry. In Chapter 3, Fanny makes passing mention of him as a “stickler” (42), and aligns him with Henry Foster as the sort of fastidious standard bearer of the society. This perception is later undercut, though not necessarily through his fault alone, when it is discovered his former lover, Linda, who he’d assumed had perished during an outing at the Savage Reservation, turns out to have survived and given birth to his child.