Edited Open Prompt-November 11

2005, Form B. One of the strongest human drives seems to be a desire for power. Write an essay in which you discuss how a character in a novel or a drama struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be sure to demonstrate in your essay how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.

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Bernard Marx, a character of Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, is ultimately driven to destruction by his desire for power. Through his use of foils and symbols, Huxley sends the message that power is at odds with the ability to know the "truth."
In the vastly different society of Brave New World, based in the twenty-sixth century, Bernard struggles to fit into the social structure that is engineered by the government to create a "happier" society. He doesn't fit into the caste he was decanted (artificially born) into, and is a social outcast for much of his life in a world where solitude is dreaded and even regarded as immoral.
Huxley uses Helmholtz, another high-caste and intelligent man, as a foil to Bernard. Helmholtz is a very popular man who fits in extremely well but he grows discontented with all of the low pleasures that others in society value. He enjoys conversing with Bernard, or rather speaking to him without much response, and is everything that Bernard wishes he could be.
After going through the misery of not being accepted by the world and developing a relationship with Helmholtz, Bernard takes a trip into the Savage Reservation and finds a very peculiar young man who was born of a "civilized" mother, a character referred to as "the Savage" by almost all of the characters but someone who is well versed in Shakespeare. Upon returning to London society, Bernard gains status and power through the desire of everyone else to meet "the Savage," or John as Helmholtz properly calls him. Bernard uses this power to sleep with many women and to gain influential contacts and he lords his new-found power over Helmholtz's head, although Helmholtz seems entirely disinterested. This contrast is accentuated in the conclusion, in which both Helmholtz and Bernard are exiled to far away islands to live with others who have dissented from the utopia-like vision that the World Controllers implement in their society. When all of his dreams come crashing down, Bernard turns to drugs to try to regain happiness, while Helmholtz is delighted and accepts his exile excitedly. It is made clear that true happiness is only found through the pursuit of truth, while Bernard finds only despair in the pursuit of power.

Symbols are everywhere in Brave New World, from the obvious in the replacement of "Lord" with "Ford" in all instances to the soma (drugs) that people consider to be essential to psychological well-being. The symbol which seems to me to best represent Bernard’s desire for power is the sex that he obsesses over. After gaining an elevated social position through his enforced possession of John, Bernard uses this to get with many women like he had seen Helmholtz and others of his caste doing previously. He not only lusts after the women but also the feeling of power over them that he gets when he knows he “could have any woman he wants.” He is invited to high-class dinners and other events and begins behaving like one of the normal members of society’s elite, but it all crashes down when John refuses to be paraded around in front of all Bernard’s friends after a while of putting up with it. He swiftly goes from one of the most well-known members of London’s elite to a nobody and is threatened with being sent to Iceland, where people are exiled to if they disobey the laws of the new world. At this point, Bernard turns to soma to try to become happy, but is unable to find happiness in Huxley’s version of the opiate of the masses as he has just lost all of the power he lusts after.

Another symbol that features in the story is Shakespeare’s works. John has a copy of Shakespeare from the reservation that was passed down over the years and enters a state of rapture whenever he reads it. His reaction to Shakespeare, which represents the high culture that has been destroyed in the new world, juxtaposes Bernard’s despair as his life falls apart and his drug addiction that follows.

In Brave New World, Huxley provides a critique of the power-hungry and mourns the value of happiness over knowledge. He sends these messages through the use of foils and satire involving the central characters of Bernard and John.