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2 Characters
2.1 Of the Fordian society
- At the Solidarity Service: Morgana Rothschild (woman whose unibrow haunts Marx at the Solidarity Service), Herbert Bakunin, Fifi Bradlaugh, Jim Bokanovsky, Clara Deterding (the President of the group), Joanna Diesel, Sarojini Engels, Tom Kawaguchi
2.2 Of the savage reserve, particularly in Malpais
- John, "the Savage"
- Linda, his mother, formerly of the Fordian society
- Warden of the Reservation, who himself is not a savage
- Kiakimé, whom John loved
- Kothlu, who married Kiakimé
- Old Mitsima, one of the finest Huxleyian characters, who teaches the outcast John about Indian lore
- Palowhitwa
- Popé
2.3 Historical characters
These are fictional and factual characters who died before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel.
3 Satire of 1930s society
As a method of underscoring similarities to his fictional dystopia and his own contemporary culture, Huxley incorporates several sly, satirical references to targets such as the Church of England, the BBC or British tabloid The Daily Mirror ("The Delta Mirror"), Henry Ford, George Bernard Shaw and Sigmund Freud.
4 Comparison with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Brave New World and George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four are both often used in political discussions of government actions perceived to be anti- libertarian. However, a key difference between 1984 and Brave New World is that while in 1984 people are kept from knowledge perceived to be "dangerous" by means of continual mass surveillance and coercion, in Brave New World the characters are physically engineered to not desire "dangerous" knowledge in the first place. One could say that while in 1984 the people are dehumanized by the state controlling their natural instincts such as sex or free thought, in Brave New World the "state" infantilizes the masses by giving free rein to basic human instincts such as sex and ceding responsibility to herd mentality .
Both novels incorporate a class of people (in 1984 the "proles" ( proletariat) and in Brave New World those who live on "reservations") who exist on the periphery of the dystopian society in a state of relative physical squalor, but with little to no societal interference, outside of an enforced state of non-education. While both classes as such are peripheral to their respective milieux, they serve as an important device for delineating contrast between the dystopian society in question and what the author perceives as being a more ideal society.
In addition, the society presented in Brave New World is, to some extent, tolerant of outsiders, in so much as it respects the idea of there being an "outside". While the dystopian world of 1984 is all-encompassing, the world Brave New World includes "savage reservations" and "the islands". The latter are effectively places of exile for freethinkers, but they are also to some extent a "safe haven". No such places exist in 1984.
5 Brave New World--Revisited
Brave New World--Revisited (Harper & Row, 1958, 1965) is a companion book (also by Huxley) which gives considerable additional detail about the society of Brave New World. In many ways it is different in tone and impact to the original novel, due to Huxley's evolving thought and his conversion to Buddhism between the two books.
