John As A Tragic Hero (Brave New World)

JOHN AS A TRAGIC HERO

The book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley shows how John is a tragic hero. His journey through the book shows actions and decisions in matters of love, morals and spiritualreassessment that prove the reader he is a tragic hero. The commitment he has to his ideals determines his tragic ending.
John believes in love. In the reservation he had never being able toexperience love himself, so he had done it through William Shakespeare and his poetry. He had felt love when reading The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet. This was all that he knew of love until he went tocivilization. When John meets Lenina at the reservation, he felt an attraction for her and this continued to after, when he entered civilization and society. John wants to “undergo something nobly” (190)to prove his love for Lenina. Ahead in the novel, he confesses: “I love you, Lenina” (191). When Lenina acknowledges this, her instantly reaction was to undress. She was ready to have sex with John.This was the way she was conditioned to behave and her view of what love was. Instantly, “the savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm’slength”(194) and started calling her a “whore! Impudent whore!”(194). Instead of having the easy way and follow his desires of having Lenina, John refuses to have sex with her. Just as Prince Ferdinandtried not to have sex before getting married in The Tempest, John avoids having sex with Lenina. He did not have sex with Lenina even he wanted to. John punished himself by not following his desires,making himself fell miserable and tragic.
John also presents an internal fight because of how civilization achieves happiness and the contradiction this has with his morals and virtues. He believesthat only freedom will bring real happiness to individuals and that it will be achieved by having the right to religion, poetry, art and God. Precisely these are the things that had being deleted...