Praised From a New Perspective

"Squealing and chattering they entered. In a moment, it seemed, the ward was maggoty with them. They swarmed between the beds, clambered over, crawled under, peeped into the television boxes, made faces at the patients." -pg 210-202

Brave New World clearly has a new star: John the Savage. Bernard is replaced by John as the main character. It seems now Huxley's only purpose for Bernard was for him to bring John the Savage into the new world and offer a contrast as to how even the independently minded of the new world are still captive to their conditioning. With a new character's focus, the brokanovsky groups, the twins manufactured by the hundreds, are brought into a different, disturbing light that the audience can better identify with in the quote above. These more familiar perspective shared between John and the readers is caused by how foreign the "brave new world" is to both parties.

This sharp contrast is first realized when John's mother, Linda, is lying in the hospital dying. The twins of the brokanovsky groups are conditioned to accept death as a mere fact of life, a period at end of a sentence. They neither fear nor anticipate death. So when John became distraught over his mother's condition, this fascinated them. The quote above uses a simile to create an creepy, negative image and connotation to the countless twins. They children are likened to insects, all the same and without real human emotions. In all honesty, this is one of the first things I thought when I read about how people are manufactured in groups of identical twins. This new perspective that I could share with the main character was refreshing since before I was constantly guessing what Bernard was going to do and wondering whether he was going to be able to overcome his conditioning.

 Nearing the end of the novel, Huxley changes the perspective maybe to show a progression. He started at completely impersonal, with no main character and no official perspective. Then when Bernard became the protagonist, the perspective took 'undecided' as its official stance. Now that John is the new protagonist of the novel, his perspective is clearly against how the new world operates. This progression allows the reader to assess the situations in the novel without bias at first, but then leads the reader to the conclusion that Huxley wants them to have. The change in perspective, especially the end perspective, makes the novel more didactic then if had only one perspective the whole time.