Huxley’s Exposition or orientation device is contrived; a guided tour by the Director ostensibly directed at students orientates the responder into the culture and ideology of the year 632 AF. We are informed about the situation and how the conditions came about.

Characterisation #

• The director appears aloof, composed and authoritative, only later his indiscreet admission of abandoning a yellow haired woman in the New Mexico Reservation, proves to be his ruin as John, the Savage calls him Father, humiliating and destroying his career.

• The women are generally portrayed as airheads, totally consensual and compliant.

• Most of the characters are as conformist as sheep; the herd mentality is perhaps best illustrated toward the end with their mass obsession of John’s peculiar bizarre behaviour.

• The oddballs, Bernard and Helmholz stand out as non –conformists and suffer as a result. The banality and insipidness of the rest make them indistinguishable and monochromatic.

• John appears to be the only one with human traits of caring, compassion and empathy; the rest have hearts of stone. Yet John portrayed as somewhat simple and naïve.

Contrasts #

Life then/now, Antiseptic, sterile/ fecund reservation