Character Analysis: Brave New World Michael Wainwright

Brave New World, by acclaimed author Aldous Huxley, is not so much a novel about individuals as it is about a society as a whole. It is a story of a dystopia, of a cold scientific world order and the people who inhabit it. Against this harsh setting, Huxley experiments with various ideas and philosophies, using an eclectic cast of characters to move his ideas from the printed page to the reader by placing them in a human, or semi- human, context. In many ways, Brave New World is almost a story of survival - not survival as opposed to the natural world, but survival of the human race, of individuals trying to live in a world where the individual spirit is considered nonexistent. In this context, the people who inhabit Brave New World jump off of the page, each offering his or her own testimony to the inherent bizarreness of the scientifically-crafted lifestyles of this âbrave new world.â?

Bernard Marx is perhaps the most compelling character throughout the first part of the book, his last name ironically being that of the founder of Communism. By the standards of the âBrave New World,â? Marx is a dysfunctional person, his conditioning having obvious flaws. He suffers from a sort of inferiority complex, due to his small height -...