I have a lot of feelings about Lenina Crowne.
To start, I don't like her in the slightest. She is annoying,
entitled, and the embodiment of high society. She sees herself as essentially
nothing and yet everything at the same time. She could be in a Leia-style gold
bikini smelling like a flower dipped in ecstasy and ask why the savages were so
primitive. I hate her. However, I really pity her character. Lenina was brought
up in a world without love. That’s sad enough, but nearly every character in
this book was raised without love, so that isn’t my sole reason for pitying
her. I pity her because she falls in love herself and doesn’t know it.
I swear I’m not a romantic person. At least, not really. But
even I can comprehend that John and Lenina’s relationship was tragic in every
sense of the word. For John, who has only ever read Shakespearean romance, this
is love at first sight. This beautiful white woman comes to his village on
vacation. I don’t like the fact that her whiteness is made a trait that makes
her more beautiful than the other girls, but it’s right there on page 78. To
him, she is unique in all the world. He pretty much sees himself as Romeo. He
had his heart broken by Kiakimé (Rosaline)
and found Lenina in her place, his Juliet.
Personally, I hate that story, but I wasn’t raised on
Shakespeare and tears. Moving on.
This meeting wasn’t very special for Lenina. This is how she
reacts to seeing him the first time: “Lenina was smiling at him; such a nice-looking
boy, she was thinking, and a really beautiful body” (Huxley 78). She
experiences physical attraction similar to his, seeing as he, too, is white and
handsome. But for her, who has never heard of love or marriage, he is just
another attractive man to bed.
John wants to remain chaste until marriage like the goody two-shoes
he is. I’m not knocking him for wanting that, but he is a goody two-shoes.
Lenina, as we know, is the opposite of chaste and wants to have sex with John
ASAP. Naturally, tensions rise and John is having a bad time. When Lenina
undresses in front of him and throws herself at him when he says he wants to
marry her, the bomb goes off. John calls her a whore and says he never wants to
see her again.
And Lenina will never understand why this boy left her.
I will not say Lenina was entirely innocent. She made a lot
of bad decisions, including misinterpreting and basically ignoring the idea of
consent from John. But that is who she was trained to be. She’s practically a
sex doll because that’s what society demands of her. In fact, she is constantly
described as “pneumatic”, which means “full of air”. John wants a real relationship
with emotions and a bond that can suffer and still remain strong. When Lenina
is faced with suffering, she takes some soma
and leaves.
To make matters worse, it doesn’t end with their fight.
The book ends with John attempting to live his life in
solitude, paying for his sins (aka his sexual desire for Lenina). A man films
him whipping himself and makes a 4D movie out of it, making John a sensation. A
horde of people appear at his door and scream for the whip. In that horde is
Lenina. She isn’t screaming with the rest of them. She “pressed both hands to
her left side, and on that peach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a
strangely incongruous expression of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemed to
grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly,
she spoke again; then, with a quick, impassioned gesture stretched out her arms
towards the Savage, stepped forward” (175). She feels something. Something that
makes her cry, and it isn’t the pure euphoria she’s used to. And these feelings
are associated with John. We’ll never know what these feelings are since he
then goes on to whip her in an angered frenzy, have sex with her, and hang
himself out of shame. Still, she felt something. Maybe it was something real.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t.
9:59 AM
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This cover shows John at the bottom, Lenina Crowne in the
middle, and Mustapha Mond at the top as a looming background figure. I drew
John’s skin darker than Lenina’s because I imagined that he would be tan from
being outside more often than her. There’s also more sun in North America than
in London, where Lenina and the other “civilized people” live. I have John in a
crouching position. It is a bit primal, but that wasn’t the main point of
having him in that pose. It puts him lower. Society sees him as odd and
backwards. Although he is famous and receives many luxuries, he is still not
part of the society that worships him. Had he remained undiscovered, the
“civilized” would see him and his people as beneath them. The crouch is also
feral, in a sense. To me, it seems like a potential attack position. John’s
humanity and ability to feel unhappy is a focal point in the book. He is
different because he does not want to be in a constant state of delirium. He is
poised to strike. Out of the ordinary to the World State and yet entirely
natural. The very purpose John’s character is made to serve.
Above him is Lenina. Of course, the hierarchy does dictate
that she would be above him, but there’s more than that. John loves her. Is the
love superficial? Absolutely, but that doesn’t matter to John. His conservative
upbringing and romantic nature make him see Lenina as a higher being. He has
romanticized her. Anyone who knows Lenina’s character knows that she isn’t
particularly kind or caring. She’s quite stupid. John doesn’t see any of that.
He just sees a beautiful woman that he wants to marry. Lenina has her arms
outstretched toward the reader with her palms out. This position is supposed to
show her offering herself. Not only does she do this multiple times throughout
the book but, in my mind, she also represents this society attempting to sell
itself to John and the reader. She is elegant, happy, and sexual, the ideals of
this society, and sets her sights on John. She pursues him sexually and he
repeatedly rebuffs her, much to her confusion. Still, the pleasures of this
society attempt to seduce him through Lenina and he turns them both down.
Behind them both is a
large, intimidating Mustapha Mond. Mond, as he is in the book, is behind
everything. His position is literally titled “World Controller”. Though he is
one of ten, it’s easy to say that he is behind most of what happens in the
civilized world, which is why he behind Lenina more than John. His voice is
also the voice they use to indoctrinate children and subdue them as adults. He
controls the entire London system with his voice. This man is the puppet
master, and hopefully his position makes that obvious.
I wanted the background to be white. It took a lot of work to
make it pure white. If this is in the high-tech future, surely things would be
minimalist. White, clean lines, and a lack of clutter are the first things that
come to mind when thinking about the future. So I decided to make the
background as clean as possible.
Most book covers I’ve seen focus on the story rather than the
characters. The characters are so interesting to me, though. I felt like I had
to make the cover about them. The characters, to me, are the most important part
of the book. It’s not a good book without good characters, and the main
characters of this book are captivating.
12:41 PM
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Aldous Huxley was born in Godalming, England on July 26, 1894. His family came from a long line of intellectuals. His early life was full of science, religion, and education. He and his siblings faced a tremendous amount of pressure to be perfect. This pressure may have been the cause of the suicide Aldous’ older brother Trevenan. After a blight of sickness in his mid-teens, he was left partially blind. Huxley is best known for Brave New Word, but he has written several other books, most of them satirical. His first novel, Crome Yellow, was published in 1921, five years after he graduated from Balliol College at Oxford University. After graduating, he also became a teacher in Eton and an editor on the Athenaeum, a London journal. He also worked on Vogue and Vanity Fair before focusing solely on his own novels. Brave New World left a permanent change in Huxley. His novels published after Brave New World took the idea of evil more seriously. Huxley moved from England to New Mexico, United States in 1937 with his wife Maria. Later he moved to California to correct his vision. He continued to write for the rest of his life. He died of cancer on November 22, 1963.
11:08 AM
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I love kids. They’re adorable, funny, and lively. I love watching them and being around them. It shouldn’t be shocking to hear that any seen involving toddlers in this book got the biggest reaction out of me. The way this “advanced” society treats children is deplorable. From the Pavlovian experiments on page 13 to Linda beating her son for existing on page 85, I was upset to near tears. However, when any adult was suffering, I lacked empathy. Could it have been because most of the adults in this story have very trivial woes? Maybe. Could it have been because I disliked the character? Perhaps. When faced with the hardships of the “savages”, which were much harsher and sadder, I still felt very little sympathy for the adults. I cared more about them than the “civilized” people, but still not as much as the children. I’ve noticed this apathy for my elders for a long time. The troubles of adults often bore me. Especially the adults in this book. Most of the reader’s time has been spent with bland men or women with no self-worth. Everyone is on drugs, they live like royal cattle, and they still find the audacity to complain? Part of me hates them, particularly when I consider what they do to these kids. I find children more worthy of my compassion because I trust them more. I was the oldest sister and cousin, so I’ve spent my whole life playing with and trusting younger people. With my newest cousin, who is almost 2, I feel that that trust in children is growing. I guess I’ll have to keep myself from rolling my eyes the next time some rich Alpha complains. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have a good reason not to care next time.
5:21 PM
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“Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure” (Huxley 13).
The reader is seeing what the babies see: bright colors,
pretty shapes, and beautiful flowers. Like said babies, the reader is supposed
to have good feelings about these things. They are pleasant to the eye and
represent the beauty of nature. As seen in the last sentence, the babies like
what they see the same way the reader does. They have infantile reactions, but
the writing has served its purpose. The scene is meant to draw out similar
feelings from the babies and the reader. When the sirens begin blaring and the
children are given electric shocks, the reader is abhorred. I mean, the babies
are more upset than the reader, but it’s still disturbing for the reader to
watch. In the end, the author is trying to say that our reactions are infantile,
likening the reader to babies.
8:56 AM
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