Our first meeting with Linda in Chapter Seven is fairly disturbing, if
only because Huxley describes and portrays her as grotesquely as
possible
She’s all bloated flesh and bad smells, stinking of the crude alcohol
and drugs that she’s used in futile attempts to replicate a soma
holiday
This is the grotesquerie of Mother; no wonder it’s an obscenity where
Lenina hails from!
Linda points out that she simply didn’t need the skills she needed for
the real world when all that was required of her in the World State
was so much simpler – not so much instinctual as conditioned, but
automatic all the same
Birth, parenting, motherhood – it all seems impossible when you’ve
never been taught to do any of it
“There's so much one doesn't know; it wasn't my business to know. I
mean, when a child asks you how a helicopter works or who made the
world – well, what are you to answer if you're a Beta and have always
worked in the Fertilizing Room? What are you to answer?”
This actually points to something else about Huxley, albeit obliquely
so, that’s important, but that we haven’t discussed yet
One of Huxley’s odder fascinations concerned eugenics – the idea of
advancing the human race through selective reproductive habits that
increased the prevalence of desirable traits and eliminated
undesirable ones
This meant that one needed to make sure that the High had more
offspring while the Low reproduced less frequently in order to
increase, say, the human race’s average intelligence level
The eugenics movement is not one of the twentieth century’s finer
achievements, and while the British Eugenics Society claimed Brave New
World was about their movement, Huxley actually keeps it fairly toned
down; if anything, it’s easy to interpret Brave New World as an angry
broadside against eugenicist pursuits
Huxley’s fixation on the idea that humans could be “controlled for
traits,” however, did make its way into the book
He was convinced that authors such as H.G. Wells, whose utopian
visions rested in part on the idea that the High could be convinced to
alternate between High and Low work, were hopelessly misguided, that
they did not understand the human heart as he did
In his mind, a superior individual could not move from fertilizing a
field one day to composing an opera for the next three before
returning for half a week to the fields; he simply wouldn’t tolerate
work that was so clearly beneath his traits and talents
Huxley’s attitudes towards humanity made it impossible for him to
believe in Utopia
We diverged from the discussion about Linda because we needed to point
out a problem with Huxley’s attitude, a problem that expresses itself
exquisitely through Linda herself
Basically, if the High cannot bother itself with Low work, it will
quickly adopt a position of learned helplessness
This is all well and good when the World State actively promotes
learned helplessness
Linda’s narrow skill-set is appropriate in a society that shuns
challenge, versatility, and hardship while prizing specialization,
efficiency, and ease
Unfortunately, her lack of skill leaves her completely helpless when
cut off from the society she knew
You essentially become dependent out of ignorance
For example, I probably had a longer and richer academic career than
my mechanic…but I can’t fix my own car, and I undoubtedly feel less
confident in his presence than he feels in mine
This is the value of living with risk; if you’re ever in a situation
with uncontrolled variables (i.e., anywhere outside the World State),
you need to be versatile, and problems force you to acquire those
skills
John’s mother may not have coping skills, but John is not like his
mother, and not simply because it’s clear he’s had to fend for himself
for some time
He’s the product of so many conflicted mythologies and belief systems;
the Savage Reservation isn’t just a non-World State society, but a
schizoid fusion of different ones
To be honest, John’s coping skills aren’t the best either…but at least
he’s trying!
Chapter Eight fleshes out John’s history, and it’s a complex one, full
of pain, hardship, and longing, perfunctorily punctuated by small
triumphs and fleeting moments of joy
Huxley tells it in a dreamlike way, hopping from moment to moment in
order to build up the backstory
Those of you reading Slaughterhouse Five will eventually see a more
complex variation of this narrative style
We see his difficult relationship with Linda, who doesn’t let him call
her Mother (for obvious reasons)
Linda is a creature from a different world, and her refusal to
assimilate and adapt to this one separates her from her son
John doesn’t really understand how to relate to her because his
natural feelings differ from her conditioning
Linda’s Beta-like behavior – entertaining married men, heavily abusing
drugs – make her an outcast in the world of the Reservation, which
makes John a marked target for abuse; his only means of coping with
the others’ cruelty is to take pride in his ability to read, even
though his reading is largely limited to a World State textbook
For a while, his only happiness lies in the moments when Linda shares
stories about the “Other Place”
Then he stumbles upon The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and
his world transforms
Much like Helmholtz, John has been searching for something without
knowing precisely what he’s looking for; this is why he feels a primal
excitement after creating things out of clay
When he reads Shakespeare, he’s pierced
He finally has language to describe his feelings, language that Linda
could never teach him; after all, she’s emotionally illiterate
Shakespeare’s words are old, ornate, overly patterned and selfconsciously beautiful
In other words, they’re perfect for John, who ends up living out
Shakespearean themes and events on a regular basis
His attack on Popé, for example, explicitly recalls Hamlet – reacting
to a violation of a child/parent bond without really understanding why
he feels what he does (and Linda, again, couldn’t tell him)
His longing for Kiakimé recalls Romeo and Juliet
It is finished. Old Mitsima's words repeated themselves in his mind.
Finished, finished … In silence and from a long way off, but
violently, desperately, hopelessly, he had loved Kiakimé. And now it
was finished. He was sixteen.
John decides to go back to the World State with Bernard, Lenina, and
Linda partly because he’s tired of feeling so terribly alone
His choice comes directly after he tells of his near-suicide, as well
as the time he tried to see what crucifixion felt like
Clearly, he’s searching for meaning, and he’s not finding it on the
Savage Reservation; he’s actually excited to see the World State
The young man drew a deep breath. "To think it should be coming true–
what I've dreamt of all my life. Do you remember what Miranda says?"
"Who's Miranda?"
But the young man had evidently not heard the question. "O wonder!" he
was saying; and his eyes shone, his face was brightly flushed. "How
many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!" The
flush suddenly deepened; he was thinking of Lenina, of an angel in
bottle-green viscose, lustrous with youth and skin food, plump,
benevolently smiling. His voice faltered. "O brave new world," he
began, then-suddenly interrupted himself; the blood had left his
cheeks; he was as pale as paper.
"Are you married to her?" he asked.
"Am I what?"
"Married. You know–for ever. They say 'for ever' in the Indian words;
it can't be broken."
"Ford, no!" Bernard couldn't help laughing.
John also laughed, but for another reason–laughed for pure joy.
"O brave new world," he repeated. "O brave new world that has such
people in it. Let's start at once."
"You have a most peculiar way of talking sometimes," said Bernard,
staring at the young man in perplexed astonishment. "And, anyhow,
hadn't you better wait till you actually see the new world?"
Chapter Nine is a fairly quiet and character-centric passage; it
mainly serves to set up the pieces whose movements will dominate the
book’s second half
Mond orders Bernard to bring Lenina, Linda, and the Savage back to the
World State, and it’s here that Huxley begins expressing what we’d
already begun suspecting: that Bernard isn’t as high and mighty as
he’d like to be
The extra bit of attention from the Controller, small as it might be,
begins to effect a change in Bernard’s personality
As it so happens, Bernard actually craves the acceptance he seems to
work so doggedly to undermine, and John gives him the means to earn it
This link to Mond, and the power he’ll have to exact his revenge on
the DHC, marks the point at which Bernard’s character begins to take
an ugly turn
He oversteps his bounds eventually, even irritating Mond with his
presumptiveness
While Bernard undergoes a bit of a personal metamorphosis, John does
as well
He swoons at the sight of Lenina, so much so that I can’t help but be
reminded of Romeo swooning over Juliet when he sees her for the first
time at the Capulets’ party
Lenina’s clothes and features are even described in childlike terms,
which serve both to reinforce the comparison – Juliet wasn’t even
fourteen when Romeo married her – and to remind us how infantile
everyone remains in the World State
The comparison is surely intentional, considering that Huxley features
Romeo and Juliet prominently in two later scenes
John almost reaches out to touch Lenina as she sleeps, but stops
himself
Not only does he resist that initial impulse, but he also feels
ashamed that such a thing could even occur to him
In the first half of the chapter, the earlier hints about Bernard’s
personality coalesced into something we could call hypocrisy; in the
second, we see the inner war between John’s nature and ideals – first
glimpsed in flashback on the Savage Reservation – resolving into
something more definite, something we can call turmoil
And just as Bernard will ultimately be undone by his weaknesses, so,
too, will John
Chapter Ten serves mainly as a means of bringing the DHC down
In turn, its real purpose is to show how deeply shameful unorthodoxy
is in the World State
You either conform to societal norms and belong, or you don’t – and
never will again
The irony, of course, is that the DHC is “a perfect gentleman” – he’s
the picture of orthodoxy
His conflict with Bernard, for example, isn’t just rooted in his shame
over Bernard’s witnessing his “confession”; he’s actually offended by
Bernard’s oddness, and plans to humiliate him before exiling him for
failing to behave appropriately impulsively and hedonistically
Remember, selfishness is fine as long as you’re taking what you want
in the context of fitting in
Once you start taking what you want in a way that separates you from
the social body, you threaten the fabric of society itself
“…His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral
responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power
to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many
should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster,
and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of
behaviour. Murder kills only the individual – and, after all, what is
an individual?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of
microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a new one
with the greatest ease – as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens
more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society
itself.”
By impregnating Linda – no matter how accidentally – the DHC has
committed an act that’s far more unorthodox than anything Bernard’s
ever done
He has created a deeply individual being, and in doing so, has created
something separate from the State (for, in this world, the State is
quite literally everyone’s parent)
In jiu-jitsu-esque fashion, the presentation of the Savage paints the
DHC as deeply corrupt, his own weaknesses manifested in the flesh –
and the man who would have banished Bernard flees into self-imposed
exile
Moreover, Linda’s hideous now, particularly compared to how she looked
when she lived in “civilization”
She’s been transformed by their “shared sin,” and her presence – let
alone her public and sloppy displays of affection – disgust everyone
who’s only know the sterility of civilization
John’s entrance, whereupon he enthusiastically greets the DHC as his
“father!”, provides the icing on the cake
It’s a theatre of the ridiculous and shameful, loudly punctuated by
shattered test tubes full of genetic material as everything descends
into chaos
With the DHC out of the way, our characters settle back down in the
World State for the entirety of Chapter Eleven
John, oddly enough, has become something of a celebrity, or at least a
curiosity
That attention decidedly does not extend itself to his mother, an
offensive presence to any who lay eyes on her
Linda begins losing herself in soma, even though such abuse will
ultimately kill her; she doesn’t seem to believe that she’ll losing
anything worth keeping, and the people around her (John accepted)
don’t think she’s of any use
The return to civilization was for her the return to soma, was the
possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without
ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without
ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, as though
you'd done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never
hold up your head again. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks.
The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was
disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison
with the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday
continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent
doses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted.
She took as much as twenty grammes a day.
“Which will finish her off in a month or two,” the doctor confided to
Bernard. “One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more
breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of
course it would be different. But we can't.”
Surprisingly, as every one thought (for on soma-holiday Linda was most
conveniently out of the way), John raised objections.
“But aren't you shortening her life by giving her so much?”
“In one sense, yes,” Dr. Shaw admitted. “But in another we're actually
lengthening it.” The young man stared, uncomprehending. “Soma may make
you lose a few years in time,” the doctor went on. “But think of the
enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every
soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity.”
John began to understand. “Eternity was in our lips and eyes,” he
murmured.
“Eh?”
“Nothing.”
“Of course,” Dr. Shaw went on, “you can't allow people to go popping
off into eternity if they've got any serious work to do. But as she
hasn't got any serious work …”
“All the same,” John persisted, “I don't believe it's right.”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Well, of course, if you prefer to
have her screaming mad all the time…”
In a world where “every one belongs to every one else,” no one wants
Linda – no one except her son, and the relationship between a mother
and her son represents the kind of devotion that simultaneously
confuses and offends civilized people
She can’t do anything other than “mother” John, and even that skill’s
useless to the social body because it’s so wrong – all Bernard can say
is that parenthood provides “an interesting example of the way in
which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to
natural impulses”
In the end, Linda has no interest in caring for John now that she’s
home; she’s abdicated all responsibilities, retreated into the
vaporous depths of soma holidays, and reverted completely and
immediately into a life that ultimately won’t let her back in
In the meantime, Bernard grows more pompous, Lenina enjoys romantic
encounters with the best and brightest of the Alpha community (the
Arch-Community Songster among them), and the Savage gets to see more
of civilization – although the contrast between him and his companions
grows with every page
When he sees the Bokanovsky groups, he’s left vomiting in the bushes,
and when he repeats Miranda’s words – “O brave new world, that has
such people in it!” – there’s a bitter, self-aware irony behind them
We zip from the brave new world back to a study of the Savage
reservation – "a place which, owing to unfavourable climatic or
geological conditions, or poverty of natural resources, has not been
worth the expense of civilizing"
This explanation doesn’t really jibe with the society Huxley’s built,
for even if there’s a shortage of resources in those particular
regions, that hasn’t stopped them from colonizing the islands enough
to be able to send people to them; for that matter, there are bits and
pieces of civilization on the reservation (the fences, the transports,
etc.)
If the Savage Reservations are another type of island (a quarantine
for cultures rather than for unorthodox individuals) the explanation
makes a little more sense, but it doesn’t quite account for the fact
that the islands aren’t part of the larger World State system, whereas
the Savage Reservations are (for example, the State’s economy profits
when people visit John’s Reservation)
It seems like Huxley’s forcing the World State to incorporate a
bastion of disorder and stability into its system, which just doesn’t
make sense when you consider how bent the State is on wiping such
things out
This is reinforced when John watches an entire academy laugh at
presentations of the very rituals he wanted to participate in
The mere idea of suffering for something larger doesn’t make sense to
them because all they know how to do is please themselves, but it’s
the foundation of everything for John
At the end of the chapter, John and Lenina each long for one another,
suffering as a result of feelings that transcend their fragile bodies
John reads Shakespeare in order to cope; Lenina takes soma in order to
escape
Nothing, in fact, paints a clearer contrast between John and the
others than the sequence directly prior to the end of the chapter
where he visits the feelies with Lenina
The scenario, a grotesque, exploitative riff on the racial politics at
the heart of Othello (yet another nod to Shakespeare within the book),
offends John’s high-minded, old-fashioned sensibilities; he feels
scandalized by foreign feelings playing across his lips at the
direction of an emotional engineer
For Lenina, it’s just great entertainment
Bernard’s offended two people by chapter’s end – Mustapha Mond and
Helmholtz Watson
His letter to Mond, in particular, inspires the latter to mutter that
he’d “ought to teach [Bernard] a lesson” – foreshadowing the former’s
eventual downfall
Without doing anything too flashy or showy, Huxley’s narrowed his
narrative focus until it’s become clear to us that five main
characters will drive the story: Lenina, Bernard, Helmholtz, John, and
Mond
Others may serve a purpose, but those are the Big Five