John's Evolution In Brave New World

When Bernard brings back John the Savage from the Indian reservation to the big city he is a celebrity. He is constantly invited to parties and gets the opportunities to meet very important people within the city. Since he is now seen as a very important person in the city this makes him feel more welcome, but he also acts very differently compared to his previous timider self. This is shown most clearly when he gets frustrated with his only friend Helmholtz about his resent popularity. It is said

This is mainly because society isolated him and that had a huge effect on his character and he can be pitied because of that. He is very selfish when he throws John into society and uses him for his own satisfaction but yet he can be sympathised with because of his selfishness. In a desperate attempt to become normal in society he calls John the "Savage" like everyone else and treats him with the same level of disrespect. John therefore loses respect for Bernard, which is a change from the first opinion he had of Bernard - which was that he was different like himself, to someone that was just the same as the others and not worth his time. That is known when John does not appear at Bernard's party and Bernard's unhappiness and anguish afterwards is known in these lines,

John is a caring person. He is young so he is open to new ideas like the

Lastly, John's imagination plays an important role because it contains some truth to it. In one of the chapters John describes Kathy peering at him from under the water with an alert expression in her eyes but is unable to speak. This is stated when the author says:

I’d have gone round ten times-twelve, fifteen. Palowhtiwa only got as far as seven. They could have had twice as much blood from me” (Huxley 100). This shows John’s urge to be a part of the savage community and be like the other savages. Him being different, causes him to be sad since he is not free to do as he wishes.

In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, John’s identities are influenced by two opposite societies, and even though he tries to prove his manhood and change the framework of brave new world, he can’t gain real acceptance from anywhere. John’s mother, Linda, is from the brave new world but gave birth to him in the savage reservation and her different behaviors based on the framework of the brave new world caused John’s isolation in the savage reservation. John decides to move to the brave new world and becomes popular in this society, but his identity, influenced by his “savage” culture, can’t be accepted by the community. His conflict with the brave new world finally forces him to try to change the framework of the society, but his attempt is

In the beginning of the story, John is trapped inside the cave with the rest of his village. The cave prevents people from seeing the truth of their worlds in both stories. Their society “In by the Waters of Babylon,” has very strict rules. They can’t go to the east, go to the Dead Places, or go across the Great River, “These things are forbidden- they have been forbidden since the beginning of time,” John says (Benet, 109).

John's life seemed to be one major drama after another; he didn't have a good male role model as a kid, and it seems he never was able to get on track. What was amazing about his life was the number of problems that he seemed to get into and how he wriggled out of them (with the help of a friendly person who just happened to meet him) only to run into more problems.

To start off with, John travelled into a forbidden area and he started seeing much more then he was supposed to see and that is when he started losing fear. In the story it states, “The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal […] These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden

     It is evident that Bernard and Lenina shift their attitudes after they meet the savage, John. Bernard gets a taste of power after bringing the savage home to London and becomes satisfied and happy as defined by Brave New World, a complete turnaround from his previous, almost American ideals. Lenina finds love and joy, as an American would define it after being content for so many years in the society of Brave New World. Before he finds the savage, Bernard is unhappy with his surroundings,

John’s greatest thing he has is the role in his town and play. He is a very wealthy farmer with plenty of land to his name. A great example of us knowing this is at act one he discusses

In the totalitarian country of London, the people are not subjected to war, hate, poverty, disease and suffering. There is an abundance of wealth, leisure and pleasures, but with utopia comes elimination of freedom and orthodox values. The people in the society are created in factories, then put into a strict 5 class hierarchy. To take the edge off of the harshness of reality, they take a synthetic drug called Soma and drift into blissful ignorance. When a savage named John—who becomes isolated from his indian tribe in New Mexico—comes to live in utopia London, he is forced to learn the strange, untraditional customs of the civilization. In the end, he has to choose between either assimilation or death. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, John the Savage is both alienated from his community and emotionally enriched after being isolated from his home tribe.

The major development seen in John’s character takes place near the end of the story, as he seeks a more pure life in a remote location. John feels as though he’s been poisoned by this new civilization “I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then, I ate my own wickedness.” (241). He wants to not only live a noble life, but to make this life on his own, so chooses an abandoned lighthouse, far enough away from the disaster of a community he views Brave New World as a negative place with negative ideas. This is a major change from the identity he showed before being poisoned by this civilization, but once again he stays true to his values by leading this new life on his own. John’s strong moral values prove to be the one constant in his character.

He refers back to the time when his children were starving, saying that “I would rather cross the Atlantic ten times than hear my children cry for victuals once” (Dowe 43). John is explaining how he would rather risk his own life by crossing the ocean than have his children cry from hunger. Dowe hopes to make his wife realize that it’s worth the long journey. Coming to America is worth the risk because him and his family would not be hungry anymore. In the last paragraph, Dowe puts in writing how America “is a country where a man can stand as a man, and where he can enjoy the fruits of his own exertions, with rational liberty to its fullest extent” (Dowe 59). Dowe says ‘fruits of his own exertions’ as a metaphor for how nobody can take away a person's freedom to live and enjoy life. He needs his wife to understand that they will be safe to do as much as they want in their new life together in

John’s actions create many conflicts with the people of this new world. “The noise of the prodigious slap which her departure was accelerated was like a pistol shot,” Huxley, Aldous, 195). In this quote John abused Lenina by hitting her extremely hard and causes her to be afraid of him. Although Lenina was coming on way too fast, he didn’t need to hit her. Another conflict that he creates in the new society is with the other people in this society. John’s actions had gone extremely far when he interrupts the rationing of Soma by yelling, “Don’t take that horrible stuff. It’s poison, it’s poison.” (Huxley, Aldous, 211). During this time he then also “... pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began