Topic B
Throughout the first six chapters of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the protagonist, Bernard Marx, struggles with his desire for something his society regards as abnormal: emotional distress. As an alpha-plus psychologist, Bernard is highly aware of the conditioning methods that are at work in the nurseries and at school, and he seems highly frustrated by others who cannot or will not see how wrong this is. While flying a helicopter over a lake with Lenina, his “girlfriend”, he brings up some of these sensitive topics, and she responds by quoting the conditioned response phrase that “Everybody's happy nowadays”, and he responds that “We begin giving the children that at (age) five” (Huxley 91). Bernard cannot fight the system, because people are biologically and psychologically conditioned from the very beginning, and thus cannot even begin to contemplate what it is to rebel. By consistantly repeating the ages that the conditioning occurs, Huxley is allowing the reader to see Bernard's struggle with others' inborn attitudes, and how they are utterly resistant to any form of thought that is against their conditioning. At this point in the novel, Bernard seems to have one friend who shares similar views, but other than that, he is alone. Despite trying to converse with Lenina about his thoughts, he makes no progress in trying to impress upon her the gravity of the situation. This futility is then projected back onto Bernard, and he relents and decides to take some Soma, or narcotics, and end the night in a haze of drugs, sex, and emotional detachment.
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