While on my vacation this week to Arizona I finished reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. During my reading I noticed the names of the characters in the book were very well chosen. Bernard Marx, for instance, was probably named after Karl Marx, the author of The Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx started a revolution in many different regions of the world with his writings and I think that Bernard Marx also started a revolution by introducing John to the society of London.
Then, thinking about John, I noticed that his name probably had something to do with the fact that John is a part of the name "John Doe"-- the name used for the anonymous. I want to tie this to the fact that perhaps Huxley wanted us to realize John, the savage, is an average person. After some research I found out that the most popular male baby names in the year that Brave New World was published, 1932, consisted of Robert, James, and John. (http://www.babycenter.com/popularBabyNames.htm?year=1932)
Lenina Crowne's name is a little bit harder to follow. In fact, I'm not sure it was specifically chosen by Huxley as a special name. Lenina is Danish and I couldn't find what it means. Their was a "John Crowne" who was a famous playwright in the mid-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries.
Helmholtz Watson on the other hand has many possibilities. Hermann von Helmholtz was a German physicist who lived in Huxley's time who did many studies on the eye. Helmholtz, in Brave New World had a different way of seeing things, and was very intelligent, as Hermann von Helmholtz was. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz) Watson, his surname, has many different people linked to it from murderers to athletes to toponymists, which ironically study place names and meanings of things like I am doing now. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(surname))
Do you agree or disagree with what I think about the names? Do you think I'm just reading in to it? Or am I on to something?
Melissa, since you are not adverse to seeking out information from Wikipedia, why not check out the entry for Brave New World?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that I caught on to that feature of Brave New World. I must admit that I was hoping to hear what other people would have said about it though. It's interesting to read what people think about the names from Brave New World though. Thanks for pointing this out to me.
ReplyDelete(This topic was discussed earlier in the summer. People DID talk about it. That's probably why you're not getting much of a response...)
ReplyDelete"People will start blogging in August, and start talking about the Postman chapters we are talking about now, and you'll think, "Oh my goodness! That is SO LAST JUNE!"
ReplyDeleteIt looks like you were right, Mrs. Fletcher.
Ben Bravo got there before me less than a week after school got out. Looks like I had no chance.
ReplyDeleteAh Melissa, it's not like that. Not every topic is unique, certainly. Yes, Ben Bravo brought the topic of names up in June, and he was not the last person either. There were subsequent discussions of naming in BNW. It's just that as you wrote your post, it didn't seem as if you had read the blog. And you weren't getting much discussion even though you had invited discussion, and I was merely explaining why. Ben Bravo is a minimalist -- he hasn't posted much more than was required by the assignment. The people who comment and participate freely and often, who fulfilled the requirements of the assignment long ago but still continue to read and write out here because they like it -- they weren't likely to comment only because they had written and commented on this topic before.
ReplyDeleteYour post does have a didactic quality to it, too. It's a little like someone just burst into the room and announced with great authority and seriousness that Michael Jackson may have overdosed on drugs. People will still discuss Michael Jackson's death, but you have to come at with an awareness that people will have some background knowledge already.
Late bloggers may sometimes get responses from other late bloggers, but that doesn't seem to be happening in this case.
Keep writing! Don't let the fact that it's August stop you from writing about what you want to write about. But if you haven't already, read through the blog.