Proud Blonde!

“Geek!” “Nerd!” “Fag!” Yell the high school guys to me and my friends after we get our bio tests back. So what if I got the highest mark? So what if my friends and I study for hours the nights before the test to do our best? I compare this to the feelings of being the outsider that Bernard, Helmholtz, and John felt in Brave New World. These men grew up in a world of conditioning to be pneumatic and promiscuous, men and women both. They are the outcasts in the book because they surpassed all this conditioning and still have a mind of their own. They still want to think on their own, about science, truth, and beauty. These men are the essence of loneliness and abandonment within their society, the nerds with their heads in the toilets getting the swirlies in today’s world.

John the Savage and Mustapha Mond were of the highest intelligence and maturity introduced in Brave New World. These two men showed their understanding of the world far beyond any other characters. From knowledge about other gods and higher powers to the emotions of love, respect, and dignity within families, John and Mustapha understood both sides of the world. The pneumatic conditioning as well as life before Ford and mass production techniques both have bonuses and faults. John doesn’t understand the pneumatic, conditioned way of life because he grew up on the reserve with emotions and responsibilities. He wanted marriage and kids and pains that came with the way of life he had in mind. He wanted to sacrifice personal loss and pains for all the feelings of love, accomplishment, and reward he would get with the reservation life, our life. Mustapha understood these feelings and respected them, but had to choose between personal happiness and the happiness he could provide for the whole of Brave New World. He chose the opposite of John. Mustapha saw the need to keep society stable, therefore continuing the conditioning of all the ‘twins.’ Both men made huge sacrifices to keep their values. John sacrificed personally, from losing his mother, realizing he could never change the only women he loved, Lenina, and ultimately sacrificing his own life rather than accepting the way society in Brave New World was run. Mustapha also sacrificed, not only personally, but also socially as he kept his knowledge to himself, valuing stability over science, truth, and beauty. Both of these men came so close to enlightening the whole world, but came up just short, as seemed to be the theme of the book.

Bernard and Helmholtz also showed intelligence in the book, but never could really understand or comprehend the way their minds worked. Solidarity and thinking were forbidden ideas in Brave New World, yet Bernard and Helmholtz could sit together in the same room, just thinking in silence, talking only about solidarity. Both men had that feeling of knowledge of more than the conditioning they had yet didn’t understand what it meant. Like always having the words on the tip of your tongue but could never get them farther than that. Bernard had the advantages of being to Savage Reservations and taking in the way they lived, but with his conditioning, never could manage more than a few days within the reserves. That’s when Bernard found Linda and John, who he managed to get out of the reserve and take back to Brave New World where he could study them, and eventually gain popularity through it. Helmholtz had his intelligence strengthened by his career, a very high class professor. When Bernard and Helmholtz got together, it was Helmholtz who did most of the talking; he was very easy going and found his words much easier than Bernard. It was Helmholtz who first warned Bernard about the way he was treating John, Helmholtz knew it was only a matter of time before John revolted from the way Bernard was using him. Helmholtz could relate better to John as well, he better understood John’s thoughts. Both Bernard and Helmholtz were sentenced to an island, somewhere they could be who they wanted, not what society told them to be. Helmholtz understood this gift, while Bernard was horrified by it, another example of their differences in intelligence. Bernard and Mustapha were as close to human as the clones got. Both men played very significant roles in the book and without them, the blinding differences of Mustapha Mond and John the Savage would never have been taken as seriously as they were and ought to be.

When I read, I am always comparing the characters, plots, and settings. While reading Brave New World, I found striking similarities between John the Savage, Mustapha Mond, Bernard Marx, and Helmholtz Watson to another book I read in english last year, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Calpurnia, Caesar, Marcus Brutus, and Marc Antony are all easily related and compared to the characters in the 15+ chapters of BNW. John the Savage and Marcus Brutus both show tremendous integrity in their respective books, both being introduced and surrounded by a epicurean, pneumatic society they want no part of. Mustapha Mond and Julius Caesar are the leaders of society for their stories, each having immense power over the other characters. Bernard is like Calpurnia in their personalities that shy away from hard times and critisms, but are always at the front of the line for awards and attention, Bernard with Savage and Calpurnia with Caesar. Helmholtz is like Marc Antony with the hidden intelligence but personality that waits for the right moment, though both missing their prime moments. This comparisson I used throughout BNW for a better understanding of the characters, and maybe the next book I read, I will compare those characters to BNW characters.