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Lenina Quotes In Brave New World

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In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley crafts a false utopia that is maintained and enforced through strict conditioning, which shapes the psyche of characters in the civilized world such as Lenina; this conditioning–evident through repetition and conflicting values between the characters and the readers–illustrates Huxley's theme: the messages and values one learns as a youth become the unshakable foundation of one's identity. Throughout Brave New World, repetition of key phrases and words characterize Lenina's simple mind, a product of society's careful engineering, demonstrating that the values learned in one's youth are integral to one's identity. Huxley concludes the exposition of the novel with a series of short statements from various speakers that reveal the state of society, including the …show more content…

These statements and other conditioned traits are ubiquitous in the characters from London, especially Lenina. She repeats "hypnopaedic proverbs" such as "every one belongs to every one else" when she encounters something contradictory to the ideals perpetrated by society–in this case, her own problematic behavior of staying with one man–showing that conditioning is the root of one's identity (40). Due to the heavily structured world created by the "World ontrollers," Lenina's sum identity and knowledge is comprised of the conditioning and little else (13). When her ideals–rather, the ideals of society–are challenged or are threatened, her only defense is a repetition of adages, illustrating the entrenchment of ideas conditioned at youth. In addition to the repetition of these phrases, Lenina also repeats words. For example, she describes unfamiliar or inexplicable customs or ideas as "queer" (107). The repetition of "her ordinary word of condemnation" instead of any number of synonyms implies that it is the only word that comes to mind for Lenina, indicating a heightened but ultimately limited vocabulary (107). In limiting her vocabulary, Huxley

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