EN 10E
Ms. Vadacchino
Brave New World Chapter 11 questions
1. Why doesn’t anybody want to see Linda?
2. Make character charts for John and Bernard. List at least 5 personality character traits for each and
include evidence from the novel to support your idea. This can be done in point form. Which character
do you like more and why?
3. Why does John hate the film (or feely)? You may have to look up the words “ignoble” and “base”.
Brave New World Chapter 12 question
1. On page 180 John says he’s relieved to see Bernard acting as he did on the Reservation. Bernard says
this is because he is unhappy again, and John responds with, “Well, I’d rather be unhappy than have
the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.” Do you side with Bernard or John? Explain.
Brave New World Chapter 13 question
1. John quotes a lot of Shakespeare in this chapter, all of it to insult Lenina and women in general. What is
the main cause of the fight between these two in this chapter? Earlier in the novel you may have sided
with John, but not for whom do you have more pity and why?
Brave New World Chapter 14 question
1. The last chapter explored the heartache and madness that experiencing love can produce. This chapter
examines death, grief and loss. Witnessing John’s grief horrifies the nurse and she thinks:
Undoing all their wholesome death-conditioning with this disgusting outcry – as though
death were something terrible, as though anyone mattered as much as all that! It
might give them the most disastrous ideas about the subject, might upset them into
reacting in the entirely wrong, the entirely anti-social way.
(p. 206, italics added by Ms.V)
There are both pros and cons to this view. Huxley seems to be looking at how pain can be both
good and bad. Consider this chapter and the previous one and make a chart using examples
from the novel of how pain is both good and bad. Finally, what is your opinion?
Brave New World Chapter 15 questions
1. John repeats the quotation from The Tempest, “O brave new world.” How has the meaning changed
for him since he first uttered it?
2. Why does John try to stop the Deltas from taking soma?
Brave New World Chapter 16 questions
1. On the bottom of p. 218 and the top of p. 219 Mustapha Mond describes quite clearly the
utopia the Controllers have created. Really think about this – is this a utopia or a dystopia?
2. On p. 220 Mustapha says “Happiness is never grand.” Do you agree? What kind of happiness is
he talking about?
3. What do you think of the Cyprus experiment? Why do you think this is included in the novel?
4. Page 223 “Every change is a menace to stability.” This actually sounds quite reasonable to Ms.V.
What do you think?
5. Mustapha also says that art and science are incompatible with happiness. What are his
arguments? Do you see any truth in them?
Brave New World Chapter 17 question
We are going to skip much of this chapter because it is repetitive. However, at the end John claims “the
right to be unhappy” along with many other things. What do you think will happen to John?