LitCharts

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

Bernard Marx

An Alpha male who by some chance is physically much smaller than Alphas are supposed to be. Bernard's small stature has given him an inferiority complex. As a result, he feels like an outsider to… (read full character analysis)

Helmholtz Watson

Helmholtz is the opposite of Bernard: he is the perfect embodiment of an Alpha male. But just as Bernard's imperfections make him an individual, Helmholtz's perfection makes him individual. Everything in life comes so… (read full character analysis)

John (the Savage)

Because of an accident, John is born to a woman from the World State, Linda, who gets stranded in a Savage Reservation. He spends the first twenty years of his life on the Reservation… (read full character analysis)

Lenina Crowne

A beautiful Beta woman. She is slightly unconventional in that she has a tendency to date only one man at a time, but otherwise she never challenges her conditioning. During the novel she dates Henry… (read full character analysis)

Mustapha Mond

One of the ten World Controllers of the World State. Mond was once a physicist who loved truth and science so much that he carried out some secret experiments. He was then given the choice… (read full character analysis)

Linda

A Beta-minus woman, who is separated from the Director in storm during a visit to the Reservation. Though she had taken all the proper precautions, she was pregnant with John when separated from the Director… (read full character analysis)

Minor Characters

The Director (Thomas)

A pedantic, charmless, pretentious, and thoroughly conventional Alpha male who runs the Central London Hatchery. He takes exception to Bernard's unconventional behavior, but Bernard discovers and reveals that the Director abandoned Linda in the Reservation and unknowingly fathered a child: John.

Fanny Crowne

Lenina's friend and coworker at the Hatchery. Fanny is even more conventional than Lenina, and essentially speaks, acts, and thinks exactly as she was conditioned to.

Henry Foster

One of Lenina's lovers. He is a supremely conventional Alpha male, and an employee at the Hatchery.

Benito Hoover

An affable though rather hairy former lover of Lenina's.

The Arch-Community-Songster

The World State version of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Popé

One of Linda's lovers in the Reservation. He brings her drugs and gives John a book of Shakespeare.