The Structure of the Novel
As a writer, Huxley refused to be kept to simple, chronological structure in his fiction. He characteristically experiments with structure, surprising his reader by juxtaposing two different conversations or point of view. In Point Counter Point (1928), Huxley even attempted to break out of traditional narrative structure altogether—to make fiction imitate the flow of musical counterpoint.
In Brave New World, Huxley’s plan to create a futuristic world and then to introduce John the Savage as an outsider demanded another kind of unconventional structure. To achieve his effect, Huxley divides the novel roughly into thirds. The first part of the novel establishes the dystopia—the London of the future—with enough detail and background to encourage the reader to accept the world as a given. The second part plunges the reader into a thoroughly different world—the Savage Reservation—to experience the shock of the London characters who are traveling there as tourists. The central part also introduces the real main character, John, in the only world he has known since birth. The third part unfolds the events of John’s life in London and his challenge of the dystopia.
Huxley’s structuring of Brave New World defies the conventions of both mainstream and utopian fiction. In most traditional utopian novels, the utopia itself stands more or less alone as a setting, with no distracting side-trips to other places. The only contrast to the utopia, then, is the reader’s own culture and society. But in introducing the Savage Reservation, Huxley introduces another fictional world—a rival and contrast to his dystopia within the novel itself.
According to convention, the inclusion of the Savage Reservation should blur the clarity of the world of London. But Huxley manages to bring his dystopia into even sharper focus with the trip to the Savage Reservation. Both worlds emerge as believable and horrifying, each in its own way.
By holding the introduction of his main character until the middle of the novel, Huxley also flouts narrative convention. In this, Huxley uses the reader’s expectations about structure to produce a particular effect. Since convention dictates that the main character appear very early in the novel, readers frequently become convinced that Bernard Marx will be at the center of the plot and theme. Just when Bernard proves himself cowardly and weak, despite his rebelliousness, Huxley offers John, the real main character.
Compared to Bernard, John appears truly heroic, at least initially, and, as a “savage,” introduces a new perspective that Huxley uses upon the return to London. In bringing John into a dystopia already familiar to the reader, Huxley can play the reader’s knowledge against the character’s innocence. And the effect of this irony—Huxley’s strong point—intensifies the climax and conclusion of Brave New World.
