Brave New World Post 3: John Savage

The civilization that Aldous Huxley creates in his Brave New World is largely inhabited by a brainwashed population. Individuality is almost extinct, as many people have been genetically modified to have similar traits to the rest of their generation. The modern culture has no substance, no literature, philosophy, religion, or art. All activities are purposed for achieving immediate gratification. When they experience displeasing emotions such as boredom, pain, sorrow, or anger, they self induce mental 'holidays' through the use of a hallucinogen called soma. Society is engineered so that people aspire to achieve continuous pleasure and nothing else. "There isn't any need for civilized man to bear anything that's seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things–Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head. It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own" (236).

Contrasted with disturbing dystopia of Huxley's World State cities are the 'savage reservations,' places that, because of their lack of resources, were not worthwhile to civilize. Children are still born of their mothers rather than decanting bottles, people grow old, disease has not been eradicated. The natives, referred to as Indians, worship Jesus and Pookong. All of this is, of course, absurd and disgusting to the people of the modern world, and they only visit these reservations as one might visit a zoo.

It is from one of these reservations that one of the main characters comes. John, or Mr. Savage as he later comes to be called, was born and raised in the New Mexico reservation. But his mother, Linda, was originally from the civilized world, making John an outcast from the other native people. It was only after she was stranded there while on vacation that she came to give birth there. John's perspective on the world is almost entirely developed by a book containing the complete works of Shakespeare, which John was given as a child and frequently quotes from as a means of articulating himself. When John abandons the reservation for the World State, he finds that here too he is an outsider. His Shakespearean principles put him at odds with the values that 'civilization' embraces, by making him unable to reconcile with euphoric state of the new world. He becomes increasingly bitter as the story progresses and he finds himself unable to make anybody see the world as he does. "I don't want comfort," he tells the Mustapha Mond, the world controller, as they debate the merits of the new society, "I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin." Mond argues that in wanting these things he is also choosing "the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat...the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." John responds, "I claim them all" (240).