Second Brave New World Post

1) Why does John quote Shakespeare so often?
Unlike the people of the World State John has not existed in a society where strong emotions and conlifts have been negated and as a result he uses lines from Shakespeare's plays to express how he feels and process these emotions. When first given the book, John has a revalation about his additudes towards Pope. "But [the word's] magic was strong and went rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated Pope before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him" (140). John is now able to understand what the feelings he has for Pope are and what they mean. This leads John to use quotes from Shakespeare as a mechanism to understand and decode his emotions.

2)Could the purpose of the World State and its citizens be to parallel the dependence of their citizens on civilization and our dependence on civilizations?
When Linda begins living with the Savages she is completely inept at caring for John and unable to adapt in the ways that her surroundings need her to. This is meant to be a parallel of us as American's and our dependence on what we know to be civlization and life. "When he tore his clothes, Linda did not know how to mend them. In the Other Place, she told him, people threw away clothes with holes in them and got new ones" (138). At the time when Huxley wrote Brave New World, it was becoming much more common for people to not mend clothes but rather to purchase new clothing, as is still the case. Linda is representative of us and our lack of self capability. This suggests that is we were to be removed from our form of "civilivation" and stability that we would just as inept as Linda in taking care of ourselves and others.

3) Why is the book titled "Brave New World"?
Aldous Huxley chose to title his book in reference to John's quoting of Shakespeare in an effort to emphasize the role of the people of the World State and satirically link Shakespeare and the society that has sought to abolish free thought.  "By some malice of his memory the Savage found himself repeating Miranda's words. 'Oh brave new world that has such people in it'" (166). For the second time in the story John has said this quote but under very different circumstances. In this case John is saying the people and their actions he is witnessing are disturbing so he is ironically using the quote. The irony of using a Shakespeare quote to title a book about a world that has made free thought nearly impossible is important as well. Just as John is using the contrast difference so is Huxley with the title.