BRAVE NEW ESSAY

                Often times throughout our life, one gets that no one understands you; you are such an individual and hate conforming to the everyday. While one might conform on the outside, deep inside one feels special yet alien; a creation of extremely precise circumstances. No character exhibits this feeling of disenfranchisement more than Bernard Marx from Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World. Bernard works as the black sheep in the novel, where community and stability are the main pillars of the utopian future.

                In Brave New World, the people of the world are divided into five castes. The Alphas are the more educated, better looking top of the pyramid followed by the Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and finally, the semi-moron Epsilons. The higher up one is in the caste, the better educated and better looking they are. All humans are “born” in hatcheries, where the whole process is artificial and controlled by workers. The lower castes often receive alcohol in their blood surrogate as an embryo to stunt both their mental and physical development. The lower caste are mass-produced from a single egg via a process called the Bokanovsky process.

This division of classes is actually one of the main factors that unite the citizens of this world. From a young age, denizens of this world state are indoctrinated via a process called hypnopædia (commonly referred to as sleep learning). The ideas of unity and segregation are simultaneously ingrained in their minds. The Alphas are taught to take pride in being the top of the social construct but also to appreciate the work of the lower castes and acknowledge that they are vital to society.

                Bernard was born to the top of the social ladder as an Alpha Plus. He’s an expert in sleep learning. Despite this seemingly perfect lifestyle, he is somewhat of a rarity. He is stated as being shorter than the average Alpha, which is a source of his insecurity and isolation. He needs to raise his voice in order to be taken seriously by members of the lower caste when for most other Alphas obedience is natural. He also has what would be perceived as different views than the rest of society. While most of society is polygamous and has multiple partners, Bernard wants a genuine relationship and refuses to see women as mere “pieces of meat”. Other characters often react with shock and ridicule towards his different ideas; Lenina actually cried when he presented some of his ideas to her.

Society and his people that know him attribute his non-conformity to a rumor that a little alcohol was placed in his blood surrogate as an embryo. These rumors are dispelled when Bernard returns from a “savage” reservation with a young adult that has been raised in the reservation his entire life. This propels him to super-star status and soon enough, he betrays his previous morals and beliefs and has relations with various women. He begins to associate himself more with the people he would hate before.

This shift attitude is often seen in real life. Humans, being the social creature we are, seek acceptance from society much like Bernard. When we finally do get accepted or invited in, we do anything to cling on to that status, including overlooking out past beliefs and morals. This goes to signify the great internal conflict that Bernard is facing throughout the novel. He wants to remain an individual and be true to himself, yet at the same time his loneliness drives him to seek acceptance from others.

The world is such a huge and diverse world that we often feel lost; alienated despite that we are surrounded by 7 billion others like us. While we feel this isolation, we seek acceptance. We want to fit in. Bernard Marx is a clear representative of this emotional ambivalence as he exhibits characteristics and has ideas that often lead him to become ostracized, yet still yearns for acceptance from his peers. Much like every-day people, Bernard is seeking for a purpose, a meaning in life in a society where everyone belongs to everyone else.