On the characters in the novel from Brave New World

In the last section, we raised the question: Can we live without Bernard?

I think everyone reading this article has a clear answer: No.

Not only Bernard, but also many characters in this story are indispensable and even dominate the whole story.

The beautiful Li Yingna, a nurse in the bottle changing workshop, does not need to be busy with housework, has excellent living conditions, advocates consumption, can associate with any man after work, and will never get old.

In this world, there is no pain and cover-up, no responsibility and no bondage. As long as everyone abides by the principle of "freedom, duty and stability", anyone can live like a carefree baby.

Li Yingna's part is full of such detailed, wonderful and contradictory descriptions:

As Bernard's female companion, it is difficult for her to accept his melancholy, let alone understand his excessive respect for her. When she found out that she fell in love with John the Barbarian, it was like she got a strong emotional enlightenment, and she quickly grew into a warrior of love, rushing fearlessly to John, quickly occupying and losing, and completely falling into the mire of losing herself.

Li Yingna is a representative of women and other civilized people who have no self. After being rejected or even beaten by the person you like, you still don't know what happened and what you did wrong.

In many novels, female characters are the lubricant of stories, and they are often used as a tool to enhance the excitement. In Brave New World, Li Yingna is the most important female character. She has been associated with three men successively. As Foster's female companion, it leads to the idea that civilized society disapproves of excessive persistence and sloppiness. And because of his curiosity about the reservation, he was accompanied by Bernard, which led to the following story; When she fell in love with John, she took John, who was also deeply infatuated with her, to a completely crazy situation and constantly tortured herself for redemption. At each stage, she helps the main characters or main contents of the stage to be vividly interpreted.

Bernard came to the publicity building to look for Watson who felt lonely because he was too good, not because of his height defect.

Watson is the champion of escalator handball and has had 64 girls in four years. But his attitude towards women is: "These women! It' s really unbearable! "

As a lonely α+similar to Bernard, his superiority and pride are in sharp contrast with Bernard, which makes Bernard feel even more inferior.

Watson's greatest function is to add fuel to the flames.

When John the Barbarian imitated Juliet's voice to read aloud, Watson's reaction was this:

Bernard was so frightened that he lost his temper when John the Barbarian threw away the worker's soma. But Helmholtz Watson's reaction was very different. He said:

Watson thinks that he doesn't live like a human being, and he can only be regarded as a lower animal or a walking corpse. In this system, there is no fun in life, only depression and pain.

In the whole story, Li Yingna, an auxiliary character, and Watson, a driving character, are like the miniature and daily versions of Bernard and President Dreamweaver. Although their appearance time is limited, and their personalities are not as diverse as those of the director and Bernard, because of them, there is an innuendo relationship between the characters, which on the one hand shows the single personality of people in the civilized world, and on the other hand provides the basis and possibility for showing the subtle gap in the single personality, which makes the construction of characters in the novel have obvious sense of hierarchy and realism.

in other words, the characters in the novel are not only the main characters, but also the secondary characters. Characters should have a basic role, but also have an auxiliary and promoting role.

While visiting the savage reservation with Li Yingna, they met a young man, John, who was willing to sacrifice himself but was not recognized and accepted by his people.

John is the son of Linda, a civilized woman who got lost twenty years ago and a female companion when the director visited the reservation.

This is John's life. He is smart, handsome, courageous and strong.

Bernard proposed to bring John and his mother back to civilized society as an experiment.

During this period, Bernard enjoyed unprecedented respect and preferential treatment. Not only did he not hear others teasing him about his short stature caused by excessive alcohol when changing bottles, but women also became enthusiastic. All the people who came to Bernard were looking for a glimpse of the savage's face.

However, when the growing gap between John and civilized society broke out rapidly with the death of his mother, Bernard's dream of being admired by thousands of people was also shattered.

From this passage, we can see that the author strongly hates this perfect utopian world.

It's not hard to find that this paragraph officially calls soma, a thing that brings happiness to people, "drugs". That is to say, from the time when the barbarian threw drugs, the story officially entered a critical perspective.

John has always been called a barbarian, and this title is not only crowned by John, but also quietly crowned by others, who think they are civilized, but don't know how to bear pain, poetry, freedom, adventure, goodness and even sin.

In Brave New World, we can see not only strong dystopia and anti-science thoughts, but also hypocrisy as human beings behind a series of symbolic behaviors. This brings out the central idea of the story: science can change lifestyle, but it can't change human nature.

In this story, human beings admire Ford as the Almighty Lord and live different lives according to different classes. Friendship is a pastime, love is a toy, parents are jokes, and life and death are sweet chocolate bars. Once everyone leaves his job, he must be as simple and happy as a baby, have nothing to ask for and be fearless, do not need to get pregnant and are not easy to get sick. When you are happy, you only need a few pills of soma, and when you are sad, you only need soma.

It can be said that Huxley's characterization is very successful. Beautiful and brave Li Yingna, Bernard with low self-esteem and cowardice, free and independent Watson, simple and persistent John. Each character endowed with the plot shows different characteristics and influences each other, thus promoting the development of the story.

There are also some people, such as the director, who represent the future, progress and contradiction; The president represents the mourning for the past and the tolerance of free thoughts.

Although the director can dominate the fate of millions of people from his work, there is also a president above him, a man who steals banned books and reads Shakespeare.

At the end of the story, John the Barbarian and the President had a long debate about existence and destruction, happiness and pain. In their conversation, we can see the intersection of the two worlds, which is the most wonderful and worth reading part of the whole story.