Brave New World: Chapters 11 and 12
Chapter 11. After Johns vomits from the disgust of viewing hundreds of identical twins in the Factory where the Bockanovsky process is put into practise, he goes on to find that the State’s library does not have Shakespeare. After John and Lenina go to a feely movie together, the night comes to end and John drops Lenina off at her house without having sex with her. This leaves her bewildered and lacking confidence. She deals with the situation by taking soma, and john releases all of his passion and emotion by reading Shakespeare.
These actions are similar because both are methods of escape. For John, the raw and passionate emotions in Shakespeare help him to understand himself and his world, and for Lenina, soma allows her to pacify any overwhelming and unmanageable feelings. Chapter 12. 1. Helmholtz has always felt some sort of urge to explore his writing abilities and truly experience life beyond the World State. Meeting John has justified for Helmholtz just how corrupt society truly is. He is captivated by John and feels that his feelings of being unique are justified.
Finally, the beauty and truth he sees in Shakespeare’s writing are justified through meeting John- someone who shares a common love for such powerful and tragic writing. 2. “Why was that old fellow [Shakespeare] such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excriciating things to get excited about. You’ve got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can’t think of the really good, penetrating X-rayish phrases… No, it won’t do. We need some other kind of madness and violence.
But what? What? Where can one find it?… I don’t know. ” pg. 185 This quote is said by Helmholtz Watson in a room aloud with John and Bernard present. He had just finished rehearsing Shakespeare with john and begins to praise how well Shakespeare can write. What he means by this quote is that Shakespeare was able to write such deep and expressive “x-ray phrases” because it derived from something so powerfully tragic and violent. He believes that the success of fictional writing derives from true emotion.
