by Aldous Huxley
This fiction novel starts out in a utopian society where
people are conceived in birthing factory where everyone is predestined to the
different social classes and jobs. The population is regulated and pregnancy is
basically illegal. Sex is only used for pleasure and not reproduction and is
encouraged with the use of fashionable contraceptives. Soma is a hallucinogen
used in ceremonies, and so that the government can control people through
conditioning. Bernard is a psychologist and is deemed different by his peers
because he is shorter than average for a higher class individual. Bernard has a
friend that is an outcast, Helmholtz. Helmholtz is different because he is all
of the desirable traits of a perfect individual but he doesn’t like that. Helmholtz talks to Bernard Marx extensively
about his writing. Bernard then goes to a reservation and meets Linda. Linda
was impregnated after being left behind on a trip and has a son, John the
Savage, who is isolated by the local “Savages.” John finds joy in reading
Shakespeare, and Linda finds sadness in staying at the reservation. Linda
dreams of returning to London and having stoma. Bernard gets permission for
John and Linda to go to London. Bernard returns to London with the group. Linda
becomes addicted to Stoma and John reveals himself as Thomas’s son. John
becomes famous but is bored by the dreariness of society. Bernard is once again
alone and looks to Helmholtz for friendship, but he becomes John’s friend. John
takes a turn for the worst. He gets violent after Lenina gets frisky and when
his mother dies of a soma overdose. John goes into a heated rage and the police
coma and use stoma to calm everyone down. John Henmholtz and Bernard are then
basically on trial. Hemholtz and Bernard are exiled while John is forced to
stay to continue the experiment. John causes mass chaos when he beats Lenina in
front of a lot of people, stoma and sex return in this scene. John is then
found dead, as he hung himself the following day.
This dystopian novel is used to show how a utopia of rigid
class structure and condition eradicates free thought. It is extremely similar
to Orwellian literature except it is on the fascist end of the political
spectrum as it hails rigid class structure and capitalism. Ford is viewed as
nearly holy and Freud is the stem of all of the sex drives within the plot. The
title depicts the entirety of the book as John goes from reading Shakespeare
and being an outcast to being the center of the capital of the world. Although
both New Mexico and London are part of Earth both have huge distinctions. New Mexico
is predominantly “savages” (natives) while London is only predestined artificial
humans.
John is a static character until the end, he is stuck in old
ways that he has conditioned himself to be. He doesn’t conform to the norms of
society with all of the sex and soma. He is savage in the eyes of a commoner.
He sees his mother’s soma induced behavior as grossly different. H hates it
when Lenina is overly sexual. This all because he grew up differently than the
preconditioned lab babies of London. At the end of the book he is the center of
attention he beats Lenina and participates in the massive orgy and soma
ingestions. He remembers that he participates in these events and decides to
hang himself. After this John is a character that I would very much like to
meet. He is similar to Frankenstein in many aspects as he is a self taught man
in a world that was never design for him. His father abandoned him and he was
left without a mother. John becomes the city’s center and eye. I would really
enjoy hearing the first person account of a confused newcomer to a dogmatic
utopia that is filled with overindulgence in sin.
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