Lenina and Linda: Character Foils Essay

Has there? […] And seeing that, you ought to be a little more promiscuous…’” (34-6). The lack of emotional attachment between individuals is also reinforced when Lenina enters the elevator. At this point, she notices how many of the men she has engaged in sexual relations with, knowing this does not distress the men nor Lenina, instead, it is an achievement: “The lift was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, Lenina’s entry was greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another had spent a night with almost all of them” (49). Furthermore, the concept of superficial relationships is also alluded to in “Brave New World”. Lenina contemplates partaking in other relationships while being involved with Henry, although Fanny explains that she must make an effort to engage in other sexual confrontations to avoid being categorised as an outcast: “‘I really do think you ought to be careful. It is such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man […] And you know how strongly the DHC objects to anything intense or long drawn’” (34). Lenina therefore partially participates in other relationships simply for personal gain, even though she does not entirely agree with the concept: “‘You’re quite right, Fanny. As usual. I’ll make the effort’” (37). Linda’s conditioned ways of living

He tried to smile at her. Suddenly she put her arms round him and kisses him again and again” (127). Since Linda has an emotional attachment to John, she has a personality different from the other citizens of the World State Society. However, despite the motherly connection that she could have continued with John, she chooses to sell her life to the drug soma. When Lenina lays dying in the hospital with John next to her, she unconsciously chooses her life of sex and soma she used to have over John: “She knew him for John, her son, but fancied him an intruder into that paradisal Malpais where she had been spending her soma-holiday with Popé” (205). In the very end, Linda suppresses her emotional love for John with soma and goes back to the principles and pleasantries of the World State Society.

Besides, Lenina’s perspective about sexual activities is greatly affected by the conditioning. To Lenina, making love is just like recreation. When Bernard mentioned about being alone with her, she replied that they would be alone all night but her actual mean was about making love with him. In the World State, being alone is considered odd or queer but having sex is an ordinary activity that even the children do so. Later, while Bernard and Lenina flew back, Bernard “began to fondle her breasts” (Ch.6). It is ironic that Bernard’s action was considered offensive and Lenina was supposed to feel uncomfortable but she was not. In fact, she actually felt relieved as she thought he was all right again. In another scene, after hearing John’s confession about his feeling toward Lenina when she came to him, she started to seduce him (Ch.13). Though John was trying to explain about how much he loved her, and that he respected her and wanted to marry her, Lenina couldn’t understand what he meant. Under the conditioning of the government, she was not aware of marriage‐the life-long commitment between two human beings, and she only knew that people made love when they were in love. Hence, once John

In their lives a distant and cold character exists. When the war began in Sarajevo the men on the hills cut off the city’s water. Kenan’s elderly neighbor Mrs. Ristovski thrusted her plastic bottles towards him when he opened the door and all she said was “A promise is a promise.” and left him standing at the doorway. Even before the war Mrs. Ristovski had always acted abrasively; knocking on their door early in the morning and complaining about their first born’s crying. Not once has she shown

“ Dr. Flint, a physician in the neighborhood, had married the sister of my mistress, and I was now the property of their little daughter” So after Linda’s mistress die, she goes to live with this new family. She relate, when she got to this new home as “ When we entered our new home we encountered cold looks, cold words, and cold treatment”, meaning, she could feel, that things are not going to be as they were before with her last mistress, and that she had nobody “I felt so desolate and alone”. When her father die, she didn't have the opportunity of say a proper goodbye to his body, instead she was ordered to go for flowers for her mistress’s house might be decorated for an evening party. “ I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them

In the short story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates and the novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley unique gender/sexual roles and disobedient actions portray through the main characters’ to defy the cultural status quo. Irony, juxtapositions, and foreshadowing are being used in each piece of literature to help the reader comprehend and compare what the author is saying about the characters and their motives now and in the near future. Connie in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, can compare to Bernard and John in Brave New World, because all are ignoring the rules, whether it is society for Bernard and John, but her friends’ parents for Connie. Each character wants to be with the opposite sex and experience life, even if they are being told otherwise. The authors each make these protagonist characters appealing to the reader because we feel as if we can connect to them and perceive their desire to oppose what the rules are and how they want to be divergent from what their controlling forces are telling them to do, whether it is parents or society.

Lenina is supportive of the way matters are handled in her society. She repeats hypnopaedic sayings with pride and refuses to hear about anyone’s unhappiness with societal matters. The totalitarian rule of the world state is similar to communism and Lenina’s name is alike that of Vladimir Lenin, a famous communist ruler. Huxley alludes to this man to illustrate the ideology of the people in this time. They are all supportive of the state of the government, but they do not realize that this is only the case due to their brainwashing. If they could understand how their lives are all pretend, there would be massive consequences for those in power. In addition to this, Shakespeare is referenced frequently throughout the novel by John. Near the end of the story, John and Helmholtz suggest bringing some of Shakespeare’s works back. The Controller denies this request because the return of his tragedies would bring back social instability. He feels that the stories would only bring unhappiness and other feelings which could lead to a loss of power. When people do not know exactly what they are missing, they are unable to fight for it, resulting in more power for those in

Linda’s exile experience was very alienating for her. What Linda thought was normal in her old life was now looked down at on the Reservation. Linda was unable and unaware of how to live a normal life on the Reservation due to the conditioning at World State in her old life. In the Reservation, Huxley stated that “nobody’s supposed to belong to more than one person. And if you have others in the ordinary way, the others think you’re wicked and anti-social” (121).

In the novels, Brave new world published by Aldous Huxley in 1932 and Three Day Road published by Joseph Boyden in 2005 two characters are changed drastically throughout the duration of the novels. Lenina in Brave new world changes from a submissive and promiscuous woman of the World State to an emotional woman, showing her the potential to defy her conditioning. Elijah in Three Day Road cracks under the pressure of the war and changes from a defiant boy to a menacing assassin. Both authors are using these novels to comment on how strongly we are influenced by the environment which surrounds us.

On the other hand, Linda’s intellectual ability is on an entirely different scale, for the most part. Linda began with all the same hypnopædic suggestions as Lenina but her life in the reservation caused her to lose some of that knowledge. Linda was able to adapt to the life in the reservation. When Linda is talking to Lenina about cleanliness and when she first arrived she mentions, “But of course they didn’t understand. How should they? And in the end I suppose I got used to it,” (121). This quote

Linda, a beta born out of the tube and has gone through all her beta conditioning, has a hard time adjusting to a new lifestyle which she is forced to cope with due to society. Since everyone is conditioned to frown upon having viviparous offspring as something considerable to breaking a major law, Linda decides to live with the savages since she had an offspring by accident and Linda was too shamed upon returning to the World State. She had no way to prevent the birth of the baby stating that, ”…there wasn’t anything like an Abortion Centre here…”(113). When Linda was younger, she came to the savage reservation

     As I read Brave New World and 1984, I noticed how some of Aldous Huxley and

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a society is presented in which every aspect of life is tightly controlled and humans are more like lifeless machines. However, in this attempt at a utopian society, glimmers of humanity are shown through several characters in the novel. Though the characters surrounding the central action are male, two very important women are also portrayed. These two woman are used to not only dispute the sexism demonstrated by men, but also in response to the women's rights issues at the time the novel was written. From the surface, one may conclude that Huxley simply includes women in the plot to balance the story. However, when further examined, the female characters, Linda and Lenina, are in many ways emotionally

Unlike her friend, Nora, Mrs. Linde has more freedom to do what she wants, however she is not entirely satisfied. In this culture, a woman’s role is normally to do housework and to raise their children, but Mrs. Linde is exempt from this. She does not have to conform into this picture, but she is not content with her lifestyle until she meets up with her lost love, Krogstad. “I want to be a mother to someone, and your children need a mother. We two need each other.”1 This quote exemplifies that Mrs. Linde is only content with her life when she fits in the role of being a mother and a wife.

Linda, for all her warmth and goodness, goes along with her husband and sons in the best success-manual tradition.  She tries to protect them from the forces outside and fails.  The memory of her suffering and her fidelity does not keep Willy and Happy from sex or Biff from wandering.  Miller's irony goes still deeper.  While Linda is a mirror of goodness and the source of the family's sense of identity, she is not protection - by her silence and her support, she unwittingly cooperates