John The Savage As A Dystopian Society

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is set in London A.F. 632 where religion is nonexistent, familial relationships are considered pornographic, and the government maintains strict control over everyone’s lives from fertilization to cremation. However, this control is not universal as there are still pockets of the old world where savages are subjected to old age, disease, and matrimony. It is from the savage reservation in Malpais that Bernard Marx takes misfits John and Linda back with him, to London. While Linda dies a slow, easy death of soma overdose, John is forced to navigate this society with a mind unhindered by conditioning, soma, or propaganda. Through this he is able to see the dangers of complete, totalitarian control of the state

John tries to change the framework of this brave new world based upon his values, but all his attempts opposing stability can’t be accepted and finally lead him to his death. Linda’s death marks a transition point of John’s life. Through this trauma, John experiences these citizens’ indifference. He can’t understand their callousness toward a real human’s death. Linda was his real mother, and he loved her very much. This kind of close relationship did not exist in the brave new world. Therefore, John can’t adopt citizens’ attitudes, and the citizens view him as a person who will destroy the status quo. This event affects John’s feelings and forces him to take a stand against the brave new world. Preventing soma distribution is his chance to confront this “enemy”. He thinks, “Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others should live in freedom, and the world be made beautiful” (210). This reflection makes him consider a rebellion –

In Brave New World Aldous Huxley, creates a dystopian society which is scientifically advance in order to make life orderly, easy, and free of trouble. This society is controlled by a World State who is not question. In this world life is manufactured and everyone is created with a purpose, never having the choice of free will. Huxley use of irony and tone bewilders readers by creating a world with puritanical social norms, which lacks love, privacy and were a false sense of happiness is instituted, making life meaningless and controlled.

John, also known as John the Savage, is the son of Linda and his father, who are both members of Utopia. He was born and raised on the Savage Reservation. John is an outsider both on the Reservation - where the natives still practise marriage, natural birth, family life and religion - and the apparently civilised Brave New World: a totalitarian welfare-state based on principles of stability and happiness, even if it`s a happiness of a superficial and bland nature.

This theme pertains to the possibility that the world may fall into the hands of the government in the name of a “utopian” society, resulting in a robot-like world without any feelings or imaginative thought if the world becomes too technologically dependent. Huxley portrays this theme through many occurrences, such as when the main character, John the Savage, is arguing with the head of the society, Mustapha Mond. John, in response to Mustapha saying that society should be based on efficiency and comfort, states “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin” (Huxley 240). The theme of oppression and restraint of emotion is characterized by Huxley’s decision to give the characters of the novel insight as to what is actually going with this “utopian” society. The absence of diversity among people and the social barriers caused by technology asserts Huxley’s overall theme of the falling of society due to technological advancements. In the society that the characters of the novel are living in, technology has made it so that people are designed to work to create more people, all in a thoughtless, monotonous manner. All in all, Huxley is able to convey a theme of Brave New World which portrays a new world run by technology in which all that

Huxley reflects the consequences of totalitarian World State, upon the concern of oppressed citizens. Provoked by Freud and with Mendel’s work on genetic engineering and consumerism early 20th century, Huxley chose a science fiction medium to warn the audience as they venture into the political beliefs and attitudes of the World State and identify its dehumanising effects. The imperative verb, ‘unescapable’ as Huxley states “All conditioning aims at…making people like their unescapable social destiny” (Ch 1) illustrates the loss of freedom due to scientific means which have constrained them into accepting the ideology taught by the World State. Huxley provides ‘John the Savage’ a sense of freedom from the Mexican Reservation where he is given thought, emotions and choice. Although he exclaims “How beauteous mankind is!” in the metaphorical “O brave new world” (Ch8) compared to the Reservation’s society, after seeing the oppression and nothingness of the World State he feels the oppression. This is stressed by the asyndeton of his desires using the personal pronoun ‘I’ in “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin” (Ch 17) as John identifies the powerlessness and mindlessness of the citizens. Though Huxley through John’s anti-thesis “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

Although the phrase of “every one belongs to every one else” (Huxley 43) is used by the society of the World State to show social conformity and unity, multiple cases of alienation and isolation are present among the main characters within the novel. In the World State, people live “where everyone is happy, but no one is free” (“Brave New World”). In the beginning of the novel, readers are introduced to Bernard Marx, who is conditioned to be an alpha, one of the highest rankings in the social ladder, but is alienated because of his size and anti-social approach to the civilized lifestyle lived out by the majority of his colleagues. Bernard’s characterization by Huxley sanctions the reader to enter into the controlling society of the World State. Bernard has “erratic attempts to conform to a society in which he feels essentially alienated” (Neilson). Correspondingly, John, the savage, believes in love and marriage, which are values instilled into him by the natives while he lived on the reservation.

Having been a somewhat of an outsider in his life, physically and mentally, Aldous Huxley used what others thought as his oddities to create complex works. His large stature and creative individuality is expressed in the characters of his novel, Brave New World. In crafting such characters as Lenina, John, Linda, Bernard, and Helmholtz, not to mention the entire world he created in the text itself, Huxley incorporated some of his humanities into those of his characters. Contrastly, he removed the same humanities from the society as a whole to seem perfect. This, the essence and value of being human, is the great meaning of Brave New World. The presence and lack of human nature in the novel exemplifies the words of literary theorist Edward Said: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Huxley’s characters reflect the “rift” in their jarred reaction to new environments and lifestyles, as well as the remnant of individuality various characters maintain in a brave new world.

Brave New World In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley illustrates alienation through the character John “the Savage” to develop the theme of isolation. Being an outcast in society John understands the feeling of isolation more than anyone throughout the novel. Although the World State viewed isolation as “political inefficiency” (page 237) John saw it as an opportunity. John begins to understand the importance of art, religion, self-discovery, and literature the more he is in the World State.

Huxley’s craft in concluding Brave New World suggests that an amoral society has defeated all goodness, ultimately resulting in the suicide of John the Savage which is a reflection of how rigid social structure, encouraged promiscuity, and the use of science as means of control lead to a horrific society. In particular, John is a very moral and religious person with the belief that, “God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic." (Ch. 17). John criticizes the way rigid social structure degrades these values. The caste system’s domination limits the ability to act freely and generate any intellectual beliefs. This suggests that when too much control is put into organizing a society, it can conclusively result in the lack of integrity

An author by the name of Aldous Huxley wrote a novel named Brave New World. It is about two vastly different worlds, a “civilized” and technologically advanced society; the World State and the “uncivilized” Savage Reservation. The World State is taken place in the future where people are born out of test tubes and when they are eight months old they are electrically shocked so that they hate books and flower. This is due to the controller not wanting his clones to have knowledge or know the true meaning of happiness. In this Utopia the government is run by Mustapha Mond. Mond is one of ten World Controllers who exile those who have unorthodox beliefs. While discussing these unorthodox beliefs, two main characters are presented. Aldous Huxley

Brave New World is a dystopian novel, written by Aldous Huxley, that shows the difference in a world similar to the 21st century, and a new world with many changes. There are major differences in the two, and the similarities are little to none. Huxley’s novel uses setting and juxtaposition to help explain how the “civilized” and “savage reservation” differ. The setting in Brave New World is shown through the “savage” reservation, which is in New Mexico, and the “civilized” world of London.

As man has progressed through the ages, there has been, essentially, one purpose. That purpose is to arrive at a utopian society, where everyone is happy, disease is nonexistent, and strife, anger, or sadness is unheard of. Only happiness exists. But when confronted with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, we come to realize that this is not, in fact, what the human soul really craves. In fact, Utopian societies are much worse than those of today. In a utopian society, the individual, who among others composes the society, is lost in the melting pot of semblance and world of uninterest. The theme of Huxley's Brave New World is community, identity, and stability. Each of these three themes represents what a Brave New World society needs

He doesn’t want to give into his desires as he believes that they make him weak and unworthy. However, anyone in the World State would give in immediately without any thought. John on the other hand believes that love should be fought for and earned. He suggests ways of making himself worthy of Lenina’s affections all of which involve him suffering. This is a completely foreign concept in the World State where people have whomever they please whenever they please so his actions further isolate him from both Lenina and the society as a whole.

Dystopian novels have become more common over the last century; each ranging from one extreme society to the next. A dystopia, “A futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control,”[1] through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, criticizes about current trends, societal norms, or political systems. The society in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is divided in a caste system, in which humans are not individuals, do not have the opportunity to be individuals, and never experience true happiness. These characteristics of the reading point towards a well-structured