Brave New World and the Tempest

What is the difference between a story which took place on an island somewhere in between Africa and Italy, to another which just happened to take place in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the Director of the Hatchery and one of his assistants, Henry Foster, are giving a tour to a group of boys? Well in fact there are many ways in which they differ, as well as having very many similarities. In many ways we can see that Brave New World and The Tempest compare and contrast to each other in terms of predicting the future of the world. We can observe these similarities and differences through the different events and characters throughout each story. For example, John in A Brave New World could be compared to Miranda, due to their transformation from one world to the next. Many times we experience this throughout our own lives, when we try to see what will happen in the future, therefore causing us to find out something that we have never seen before.

The first example is a group consisting of two characters in which I mentioned earlier, John and Miranda. These two characters portray the perfect idea of similarities between each of the stories. The reason for this is because both characters are forced to leave their world, familiar to them, and instead leave for a new and unfamiliar land of which they know nothing about. Take John for example. John first enters the story as he expresses an interest in participating in the Indian religious ritual from which Bernard and Lenina recoil. John’s longing to participate, first marks him as an outsider among the Indians, since he is not allowed to participate in their ritual. It also demonstrates the huge cultural divide between him and World State society. John becomes a main character in this story because, when he is rejected by the “savage” Indian culture and the “civilized” World State culture, he is later considered as a reject of society. In leaving with these Bernard and Lenina, John is lost in confusion, pondering on whether to leave the realm of which he is familiar and enter upon the great unknown. As he is leaving John states, “O brave new world that has such people in it”, (p 42 Huxley).

The second character whom I mentioned earlier is Miranda, the daughter of Prospero. Miranda was brought to this island at an early age and has never seen any men other