"O Brave New World"

"The Savage stood looking on. 'O brave new world, O brave new world...' In his mind the signing words seemed to change their tone. They had mocked him though his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision!" (Brave New World, page 210)


I was going back through all of my blogs and trying to figure out what to write about for my final blog. Then,  I realized I never commented about John continually saying the phrase "O brave new world". I know this is an allusion to The Tempest. However, I am going to comment on something other than just the allusion aspect of this quote.  Every time I read this line coming from John's mouth I found it ironic. From the very beginning John thought so much about this new world. John continually asked his mother questions about this "other place" and he always longed to be able to be apart of it. Yet, when John finally got the chance to be apart of this dream world, he didn't understand it at all and grew to despise every little detail about this society. I think this is similar to how people view a lot of things today. When something new is mentioned and described to people, often people are drawn and attracted to it. However, a lot of the time it turns out that it was better in theory or in thought. The concept of something new is exciting. Similarly, this is a theme that was established in Chapter 17 of the book. The New World society was based on new things. Old things were done away with because they were less exciting and they could not produce the happiness and prosperity of the society in which they lived. In result, the "perfect society" was one seriously messed up world. (In my opinion anyway).

Maybe this was another theme of the novel that the author was trying to relay back to the reader. We need to treasure everything that life hands us. Just because some things are less exciting or older doesn't mean they aren't as wonderful. By being open to a diversity of things, we open our eyes to a lot more and become better, well rounded individuals. In this way, maybe people can change and we can avoid living in a crazy, selfish world. Maybe there is hope for us all.