Quote 40
"You're more like what you were at Malpais," he said, when Bernard had told him his plaintive story. "Do you remember when we first talked together? Outside the little house. You're like what you were then."
"Because I'm unhappy again; that's why."
"Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here." (12.45-7)
John is dissatisfied with the same aspects of the World State that bothered Bernard in earlier chapters. In this way, John effectively replaces Bernard as the novel's protagonist.
Quote 41
Yes, that was true. He remembered how Helmholtz had laughed at Romeo and Juliet. "Well then," he said, after a pause, "something new that's like Othello, and that they could understand."
"That's what we've all been wanting to write," said Helmholtz, breaking a long silence. (16.23-4)
John and Helmholtz get along so well because they share the same dissatisfaction with the World State; they both want passion in their lives, the kind of passion they read about in Shakespeare.