In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World,
Bernard Marx is a self-serving person who brings John the Savage back to the New World
in order to advance himself and put the Director, who is John's real father, into a
compromising position because he has threatened to have Bernard
exiled.
However, things do not go as Bernard has planned.
So, in Chapter 16 when Mustapha Mond calls Bernard and the Savage in after the incident
at the hospital, he asks John if he does not "like civilization," and John frankly
answers no:
Bernard started and looked horrified. What
would the Controller think? To be labelled as the friend of a man who said that he
didn't like civilization--said it openly and, of all people, to the Controller--it was
terrible. 'But, John,' he began. A look from Mustapha Mond reduced him to an abject
silence.
As Mond continues to
interrogate John, Bernard sinks into "a yet more hopeless misery." Clearly, then,
Bernard is pusillanimous and only interested in saving himself from any situation. So,
in Chapter 15 when John attempts to bring freedom to the "khaki mob" by throwing out
their soma and urging them to think for themselves, Bernard
whispers, "He's mad....They'll kill him. They'll...." and he worries for himself. But,
suddenly, Helmholtz is at the side of John, demonstrating the sharp contrast between him
and Bernard.
"They're done for," Bernard thinks, but he
does run forward, "urged by a sudden impulse." However,
he
thought
better of it and halted; then ashamed, stepped forward
again; then again thought better of
it , and was standing in an agony of humiliated indecision--thinking that
they might be killed if he didn't help them, and
he might be killed if he did--when
(Ford be praised!), goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in their gas-masks, in ran the
police.
Indecisive and weak,
Bernard fears for himself. And, in truth, he does not really wish to rebel completely
as his exclamation--Ford be
praised!--indicates.
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