Brave New World Character and Relationship Map
Part of: The Deep Reader
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, shared surnames, sexual partnerships, and family ties follow different rules. The World State produces its citizens in hatcheries and discourages exclusive attachments; at Malpais, children still grow up with parents, and people marry. Moving between these societies means keeping track of what each person thinks a relationship should be.
Spoilers: This guide discusses the entire novel, including its ending.
Contents
The central relationships
The first map follows the people brought together by Bernard’s trip to the Reservation. Bernard becomes John’s guardian in London, Lenina attracts John, and Helmholtz becomes his closest literary companion. Their connections change as John refuses the role of public attraction that Bernard has arranged for him.
Three places help orient the cast. London is the center of the World State action. Malpais, a pueblo within the New Mexico Reservation, is where Linda raises John. The abandoned air-lighthouse in Surrey, between Puttenham and Elstead, becomes John’s final retreat; it stands inland, away from the main air route.
The main characters
John — the Savage
Raised by Linda at Malpais, John learns to read from his mother and later finds a language for his feelings in Shakespeare. He is excluded from communal rites at the pueblo, and the civilized world Linda describes becomes his imagined escape. Bernard brings him to London, where his natural birth and unfamiliar upbringing make him a celebrity.
John loves Lenina and imagines a permanent marriage. Her attempt to begin a sexual relationship horrifies him, although he desires her intensely; his rejection becomes an assault. With Helmholtz, he finds friendship through poetry. With Mond, he argues over the State’s suppression of art, religion, and the freedom to suffer.
Bernard Marx
An Alpha-Plus psychologist in the State’s highest caste, Bernard specializes in sleep-teaching and feels humiliated by his short stature and other people’s contempt. The story that alcohol was accidentally added to his blood-surrogate while he was still in his embryo bottle is a rumor, never a confirmed explanation of his development.
His connection with John combines sympathy with calculation. He recognizes their shared loneliness at Malpais, then uses John and Linda to defeat the Director’s threat of dismissal. As John’s accredited guardian, Bernard controls invitations to meet him and enjoys the resulting attention. John’s refusal to attend a party destroys that advantage. Bernard also envies the intimacy between John and Helmholtz, though the three recover their affection for one another before separating.
Lenina Crowne
Lenina is a Hatchery nurse who inoculates embryos. At the opening she has been seeing Henry Foster regularly; she subsequently becomes Bernard’s sexual partner and travels with him to the Reservation. Her attraction to John grows into a persistent desire for this particular man, despite Fanny’s encouragement to find someone else.
She cannot make sense of John’s courtship through Shakespeare, his proposed lifelong marriage, or his furious response when she undresses. John’s violence sends her into hiding in his bathroom before she escapes. The novel gives her a job and a recognizable social position without explicitly naming her caste.
Helmholtz Watson
An Alpha-Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering, Helmholtz writes slogans, sleep-teaching rhymes, news copy, and scripts for the multisensory films called feelies. His ability exceeds what these assignments let him express. A poem about solitude gets him into trouble with the College.
He welcomes Bernard back after their estrangement and quickly becomes close to John. Shakespeare excites him as a writer, but the family obligations and sexual prohibitions in Romeo and Juliet make him laugh. Their friendship survives a gap in understanding that poetry alone cannot close. When John disrupts the hospital’s distribution of soma, the State’s mood-altering drug, Helmholtz joins him in the fight.
Mustapha Mond — the Controller
Mond is the Resident World Controller for Western Europe, one of ten World Controllers. He outranks the Director, authorizes John and Linda’s journey to London, and receives Bernard’s reports on John.
He knows the forbidden books that ordinary citizens cannot read and describes his own earlier work as a physicist. Offered a choice between an island and a career in government, he chose government. In the final conversations he defends the sacrifices the State makes for stability. His explanation of the system is an official’s argument, with which John repeatedly disagrees.
London: friends, partners, and coworkers
Henry Foster
Henry helps the Director explain the Hatchery’s production and conditioning procedures. He is Lenina’s regular sexual partner at the beginning, while also seeing other women. Lenina continues to see him after becoming involved with Bernard. Their relationship carries no marriage or exclusive commitment.
He mocks Bernard in the early changing-room scene, then becomes friendly when Bernard can introduce him to John. His ease with soma, entertainment, and the State’s routines makes him a useful point of comparison with Bernard’s discomfort.
Fanny Crowne
Lenina’s friend works in the Bottling Room. The women share a surname because the World State uses a limited stock of names; they are not presented as relatives. Fanny urges Lenina to vary her partners, worries about Bernard’s reputation, and later advises her to pursue John directly. Her Pregnancy Substitute is a hormonal treatment recommended by Dr. Wells, not an actual pregnancy.
Benito Hoover and Lenina’s earlier partners
Benito is a cheerful acquaintance and one of Lenina’s former partners. He offers Bernard soma with friendly intentions, which Bernard resents. George Edzel accompanied Lenina on an earlier North Pole holiday. For a New York weekend, she cannot remember whether her companion was Jean-Jacques Habibullah or Bokanovsky Jones; the uncertainty belongs to her recollection.
The Assistant Predestinator
The unnamed Assistant Director of Predestination, also called the Assistant Predestinator, talks with Henry about Lenina and joins him in teasing Bernard. He is a separate Hatchery official from the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning.
Bernard’s Solidarity Group
At the Solidarity Service, Bernard sits between Morgana Rothschild and Clara Deterding. The other named participants are Fifi Bradlaugh, Joanna Diesel, Tom Kawaguchi, Sarojini Engels, Jim Bokanovsky, and Herbert Bakunin. Their ritual promises collective union, while Bernard goes through its motions without feeling the promised connection. The unnamed President of the Group leads the service; his title does not make him a ruler of the World State.
John’s family and the people of Malpais
Linda
A Beta from the World State, Linda worked with embryos before visiting the Reservation with the Director. After an accident separated them, she remained at Malpais and gave birth to John. The Director says he searched for his missing companion; John supposes he flew home without her. These accounts do not establish that he knowingly abandoned a pregnant woman.
Linda retains the sexual habits of the society that raised her, provoking conflict with women whose partners visit her. She teaches John to read and tells him about London, while her care for him alternates with neglect and violence. On returning to London she seeks a continuous soma holiday. Her eventual death at the hospital precipitates John’s attack on soma distribution.
The Director — Thomas, Tomakin, D.H.C.
All these names refer to the head of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Thomas is his first name; Tomakin is Linda’s familiar name for him. He is John’s biological father and Linda’s former sexual partner. The novel does not make Linda his wife.
His attempt to dismiss Bernard collapses when Linda recognizes him publicly and John calls him father. The ridicule forces his immediate resignation. This humiliation ends his authority over Bernard; Mond makes the later decision about Bernard’s exile.
Popé and Waihusiwa
Popé is one of Linda’s lovers at Malpais. He brings her mescal and also brings home the old Shakespeare volume that transforms John’s reading. John hates him and wounds him twice in the shoulder. Popé restrains John, laughs, and lets him go.
Linda also mentions Waihusiwa, another partner. Her confused recollection cannot decide whether John attacked Waihusiwa or Popé; John’s detailed childhood account identifies the wounded man as Popé. Neither man is John’s father.
Mitsima
An older man of the pueblo, Mitsima teaches John to make pottery and later teaches him bow-making. He also announces Kiakimé and Kothlu’s marriage. His patient instruction helps distinguish John’s exclusion from particular communal practices from the idea that everyone at Malpais rejects him. He is a teacher, with no stated family relationship to John.
Kiakimé and Kothlu
John silently loves Kiakimé from a distance. She marries Kothlu when John is sixteen. The text establishes John’s feelings without establishing a romance between them. Kothlu is her husband, and Mitsima’s role in the ceremony gives him no implied kinship with the couple.
Palowhtiwa
Palowhtiwa is the young man whipped during the ritual Bernard and Lenina witness. John wished to take his place, but was excluded. The two are separate people; the approximate age given for the ritual participant does not establish John’s age when the visitors meet him.
Officials, doctors, and spectators
The Reservation Warden
The unnamed Warden handles permits and travel arrangements. Mond’s authorization enables him to prepare the papers for John and Linda. He is distinct from the Director. The Gamma-uniformed pilot who flies the visitors and the local guide at Malpais are also separate people.
Dr. Shaw and Dr. Wells
Dr. Shaw treats Linda in London and permits soma doses he knows will shorten her remaining life. John protests, then gives in. Dr. Wells, mentioned in Fanny’s conversation, advises her about Pregnancy Substitute treatment. The two doctors have different patients and different roles.
Dr. Gaffney and Miss Keate
Dr. Gaffney, the Provost of Eton, and Miss Keate, its Head Mistress, receive Bernard and John on their school visit. Keate identifies herself as a freemartin—a woman made sterile through embryonic treatment—and arranges an evening meeting with Bernard. Their flirtation establishes an appointment; the novel does not narrate its consummation.
The Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury
This senior, unnamed official has spent a weekend with Lenina. He attends Bernard’s party hoping to meet John, rebukes Bernard when John refuses to appear, and leaves with Lenina. He is neither Mond nor the President of Bernard’s Solidarity Group.
The hospital staff, children, and Deltas
The Head Nurse objects to John’s grief and his interference with the children being conditioned to regard death casually. These children are separate from the adult Delta hospital workers who later queue for their soma ration. John throws away that ration, Helmholtz helps him, and Bernard hesitates on the edge of the fight.
The unnamed Deputy Sub-Bursar oversees distribution. Police suppress the disturbance with soma vapor, anesthetics, and a recorded calming speech. The comforting voice is a recording, not another person joining the cast.
Primo Mellon and Darwin Bonaparte
Primo Mellon, a reporter for The Hourly Radio, attempts to interview John at the lighthouse and is kicked away. Edzel is the contact he addresses through his broadcasting equipment; the text does not identify this person as Lenina’s former partner George Edzel.
Darwin Bonaparte is a different media figure: a Feely Corporation photographer who secretly records John’s self-whipping. His film, The Savage of Surrey, attracts the large crowd that destroys John’s solitude. The reporters and the later spectators arrive in separate stages.
Reuben Rabinovitch and Polly Trotsky
Reuben belongs to the Director’s historical account of the discovery of sleep-teaching. Polly is a child encountered in the Hatchery garden. Neither joins the adult circle around Bernard and John. Historical names such as Ford and Freud, and the Shakespearean people John quotes, likewise need to be distinguished from characters present in the action.
Names and aliases
Name in the text | Who it means |
John, the Savage, Mr. Savage | Linda’s son, raised at Malpais. |
The Director, D.H.C., Thomas, Tomakin, the ex-Director | The same man: John’s father and the former head of the London Hatchery. |
The Controller, his fordship, Mustapha Mond | The Resident World Controller for Western Europe. “His fordship” is an honorific. |
Lenina Crowne and Fanny Crowne | Friends and coworkers who share a surname, not a pair of sisters. |
Assistant Director of Predestination, Assistant Predestinator | Henry’s unnamed colleague in the changing-room scene. |
The Provost; the Head Mistress | Dr. Gaffney; Miss Keate, respectively. |
Jim Bokanovsky; Bokanovsky Jones | Different people: a Solidarity Service participant and one of Lenina’s possible former companions. |
Tom Kawaguchi; Thomas/Tomakin; Tommy | A Solidarity Service participant; the Director; a child in a sleep-learning example. |
George Edzel; the reporter’s “Edzel” | Lenina’s former partner; a broadcasting contact whose fuller identity is unstated. |
What happens to each central character
Bernard is sentenced to island exile. He begs not to be sent to Iceland, which the Director had threatened earlier; Mond does not explicitly confirm his final destination. Before departing, Bernard apologizes to John.
Helmholtz accepts exile and chooses the Falkland Islands, believing their wind and storms will help his writing. He and Bernard say goodbye to John before leaving.
Linda dies at the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying. John shakes her shortly before her fatal breathing crisis and believes he has killed her. His guilt is explicit; the novel does not establish his action as the sole cause of her death.
The Director resigns after the paternity scandal. Later, he is described as escaping his humiliation through soma. He is not sentenced to the same exile as Bernard and Helmholtz.
John asks Mond to let him accompany his friends to the islands. Mond refuses because he wants the experiment to continue. John withdraws independently to the Surrey air-lighthouse. After reporters and spectators turn his self-punishment into entertainment, he is found hanged inside it.
Lenina’s final fate remains unstated. The young woman John attacks in the last crowd scene is strongly implied to be Lenina, but is not named there. She calls to a companion named Henry. The scene describes the attack and the ensuing collective frenzy without establishing the woman’s death or narrating a specific sexual encounter between her and John.
For a closer reading of the society that shapes these relationships, continue with Huxley’s manufactured soul and predetermined life. The friends’ last meeting is a tender farewell, yet John’s wish to leave with them is refused. His last attempt at solitude takes place within reach of the world he has tried to escape.
Sources
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (London: Chatto & Windus, 1932, first edition), Project Gutenberg Canada ebook 1328. Chapters I–VI introduce the London cast; VII–X cover John’s upbringing and parentage; XI–XV develop the London relationships; XVI–XVIII contain Mond’s decisions and the ending.
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