Brave New World

Be Pure of Suffer? In the 1932 novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley many characters go through internal and external conflict. Many of the conflicts occur because of sacrifices, suffering and other hardships. These hardships include suffering and harming yourself and others in order to purify yourself and others. Huxley’s theme about suffering is that it is necessary to purify oneself of base desires. Huxley uses internal conflict to show that one needs to free oneself of lust desires in order to be pure. Towards the end of the novel, in this man vs. himself conflict, where John Savage has had it with his impure thoughts about Lenina. John becomes overwhelmed with his lustful thoughts about her that he throws himself into a thorn bush: “But oh, oh, her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts, her mouth!... He flung himself against them, he embraced not the smooth body of his desires, but an armful of green spikes. Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked him” (Huxley 252). Being that John started to have lewd thoughts of Lenina he thought that pain and suffering would make himself more pure. John had the idea that “an armful of green spikes” would erase the fact that he was thinking sexual thoughts about Lenina. In addition to the John Savage suffering because of his base desires, Lenina is also someone suffers because of lust in a man vs. man external conflict. Again, towards the end of the novel when everyone comes crowding around John Savage a girl comes out of the crowd and John begins to whip her. Following, we find out that the girl was Lenina. In order to make Lenina pure because of her past mistakes of impureness, John begins whipping her: “The savage had rushed at her like a mad man… he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords” (Huxley 257). In this man vs. man conflict, John remembers how impure Lenina was as he starts whipping her harder and harder.. With each whip, John believes that in order to be pure, you need to suffer