Marxism and Brave New World
Theory Analysis- Marxism - Based on “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley In the story “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, one can see that the author truly wishes his readers to analyze the book via the subsets of Marxism. The first and foremost rationale of the text lending itself to a Marxist analysis comes from the symbolism portrayed by the surname of the main character in the book. Bernard Marx seems to be such a unique and peculiar name that one can with certainty assume that there must be reasoning for it, especially considering the context of this novel. In the first few introductions to Bernard, he narrates his distaste towards his fellow colleagues for “talking about [Lenina] as though she were a bit of meat. Have her here, have her there. Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton” (Huxley 39). In the mind of Bernard, his colleagues do not treat Lenina as an equivalent human being who belongs to the same and equal faction as his colleagues. Instead, through the eyes of Bernard she is seen simply as ‘degrading’ meat. Bernard’s hatred towards this subject matter exemplifies conceivably the similarities between the thoughts of Karl Marx and Bernard. From this, one can easily anticipate that Bernard Marx will play a pivotal role that maybe shadows the thoughts of the real Karl Marx in around the period of Huxley’s era. One can even go about saying that perhaps the vast popularity of Marxism at the time of this novel’s publication posed a direct influence on Huxley’s perception of society, which he then applied to the story. Quite ironically however, later on in the novel while Bernard watches the clear ocean, “it makes [him] feel as though [he] was more [him]… More on [his] own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body” (Huxley 78). In these more updated and comprehensive thoughts of Bernard Marx, one can realize that his aversion towards the collective society of the World State shatters the previous anticipations