Point Counter Point

[4] The novel's title is a reference to the flow of arguments in a debate,[3] and a series of these exchanges tell the story.

[5] Instead of a single central plot, there are a number of interlinked story lines and recurring themes (as in musical "counterpoint").

[6] As a roman à clef,[7] many of the characters are based on real people, most of whom Huxley knew personally, such as D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murry, and Huxley is depicted as the novel's novelist, Philip Quarles.

A theme is stated, then developed, pushed out of shape, imperceptibly deformed, until, though still recognizably the same, it has become quite different.

He shows several people falling in love, or dying, or praying in different ways -- dissimilars solving the same problem.

In this way you can modulate through all the aspects of your theme, you can write variations in any number of different moods.

Another way: The novelist can assume the god-like creative privilege and simply elect to consider the events in the story in their various aspects -- emotional, scientific, religious, metaphysical, etc.

He will modulate from one to the other -- as, from the aesthetic to the physico-chemical aspect of things, from the religious to the physiological or financial.

Specimens of his work may illustrate other possible or impossible ways of telling a story.

[12] David Bradshaw has argued that the most likely source for Webley is John Hargrave, the founder of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.