Brave New World
Our task in this project was to recreate a scene from the book Brave New World in a graphic novel form. Most students were paired into teams of authors and artists, though several worked alone and handled both aspects of the task. The authors wrote a paper analyzing one of the main characters in the novel and used noun-phrase apposites and concessive theses to make their arguments. Artists focused on key choices of moment, frame, image, word,and flow in creating a graphic novel about the chosen scene. Our exhibition featured both an art show of our graphic novels, and a seminar discussion about Brave New World.
Graphic Novel
Character Analysis
Brave New World, a novel written by Aldous Huxley in the 1930s, satirizes events happening at the time into a prediction of the future. Many things were happening at the time such as the rise of the Nazi regime and the industrial revolution which influenced Huxley to write a book about his discontent and worry about them. The book conveys broad ideas through specific events that occur. Two characters, Mustapha Mond and John the Savage, are polar opposites and have extremely different ideas about society; Mond is a world controller who is rational and passionate about his work and has a huge influence on the society of Brave New World while John is an outcast who is completely against the practices of society, which adds up to how Huxley uses Mustapha as a rational character to explain all the ideas and practices of Brave New World Society and uses John as a character to question it.
Throughout the book Huxley uses different characters with different views on society to illustrate different points and make clear different aspects of society. In the beginning of the book he uses Bernard and Lenina to show opposing ideas of total conformation to society versus a subtle expression of discontent, which shows the extreme range of people and their ideas about society and how they act because of them. He then introduces Mond and John: two characters with radically different views of society. Mond is probably the most involved in society that anyone can be; he is a world controller and makes decisions for society that keep it’s citizens happy but also under control. “His Fordship Mustapha Mond! … One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten...” (Huxley 34) He is ‘worshipped’ by the standard citizens of society and has a huge effect on them. John on the other hand, is an extremist about society; he thinks everything about it is all wrong. “But do you like being slaves?” (Huxley 212) He believes that even though the government does everything in it’s power to make it’s citizens happy all the time and that it is a sort of false happiness and the only way to experience true happiness is by also experiencing unpleasant emotions and because of that they are denied the truth and will always be bound by society.. Aldous Huxley makes these two characters so vastly different and makes them foils for each other to show off different ideas about the society.
I think that Huxley uses both John and Mond as foils for each other to show the opposing opinions about Brave New World State, but I also think he uses Mond specifically to logically explain all of the aspects of Brave New World; he makes John the one that is opposed to society, but also the one that is uneducated and primitive whereas Mond is the one who is supportive of society and is also the smarter and more logical of the two. During their conversation in the last couple of chapters they had those questioning and explanatory times; “ ‘Then you think there is no God?’ ‘No, I think there quite probably is one.’ ‘Then why?...’ ”(Huxley 234) I think Huxley does this to show and explain the ideas and concepts of Brave New World through its smartest character and show those ideas; Huxley uses Mond specifically to reveal why everything in Brave New World Society is the way it is and John to question it. I feel like their dialogue in the last few chapters is kind of an explanation for everything prior that happened in the book.
In the book Brave New World, Huxley uses Mustapha Mond and John the Savage as foils for several reasons. He uses the two to show the extremes of both arguments, reveals important aspects of the book such as the reasoning behind conditioning and the use of soma, uses the elementary and basic John to question and oppose the ideals of Brave New World, and uses the educated and rational Mond to reinforce them and give explanations. Huxley uses Mustapha Mond and John the Savage to illustrate the different concepts of Brave New World society.
Throughout the book Huxley uses different characters with different views on society to illustrate different points and make clear different aspects of society. In the beginning of the book he uses Bernard and Lenina to show opposing ideas of total conformation to society versus a subtle expression of discontent, which shows the extreme range of people and their ideas about society and how they act because of them. He then introduces Mond and John: two characters with radically different views of society. Mond is probably the most involved in society that anyone can be; he is a world controller and makes decisions for society that keep it’s citizens happy but also under control. “His Fordship Mustapha Mond! … One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten...” (Huxley 34) He is ‘worshipped’ by the standard citizens of society and has a huge effect on them. John on the other hand, is an extremist about society; he thinks everything about it is all wrong. “But do you like being slaves?” (Huxley 212) He believes that even though the government does everything in it’s power to make it’s citizens happy all the time and that it is a sort of false happiness and the only way to experience true happiness is by also experiencing unpleasant emotions and because of that they are denied the truth and will always be bound by society.. Aldous Huxley makes these two characters so vastly different and makes them foils for each other to show off different ideas about the society.
I think that Huxley uses both John and Mond as foils for each other to show the opposing opinions about Brave New World State, but I also think he uses Mond specifically to logically explain all of the aspects of Brave New World; he makes John the one that is opposed to society, but also the one that is uneducated and primitive whereas Mond is the one who is supportive of society and is also the smarter and more logical of the two. During their conversation in the last couple of chapters they had those questioning and explanatory times; “ ‘Then you think there is no God?’ ‘No, I think there quite probably is one.’ ‘Then why?...’ ”(Huxley 234) I think Huxley does this to show and explain the ideas and concepts of Brave New World through its smartest character and show those ideas; Huxley uses Mond specifically to reveal why everything in Brave New World Society is the way it is and John to question it. I feel like their dialogue in the last few chapters is kind of an explanation for everything prior that happened in the book.
In the book Brave New World, Huxley uses Mustapha Mond and John the Savage as foils for several reasons. He uses the two to show the extremes of both arguments, reveals important aspects of the book such as the reasoning behind conditioning and the use of soma, uses the elementary and basic John to question and oppose the ideals of Brave New World, and uses the educated and rational Mond to reinforce them and give explanations. Huxley uses Mustapha Mond and John the Savage to illustrate the different concepts of Brave New World society.