Already, Brave New World is becoming one of my favorite books for its plausibility in the real world. Also, the character John the Savage is an intriguing character. He seems to be a rebellious spot of dirt in the sterile World State. He speaks of extinct ideas that are even before our present time. John also lives and dies tragically like in the Shakespearean plays he has memorized.
Analyzing this novel, I see the metaphorical meaning of John the Savage. He is an outsider because he does not belong in a caste, his skin is dark, and he has the pornographic label of a son. The label "savage" is ironic, since he chooses to be chaste with Lenina and speaks like a 16th-century era gentleman. I think his role serves to show the discriminations of this society against someone like John. The sudden end to his life comes as he realizes he does not fit into his Native American tribe or even the World State. He is not a savage, but the idealized intellectual Huxley imagined as an alternative to the brainless, aimless, man of the future.
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I completely agree with you Kevin, and I would just like to add that John's character (I believe) served as more than just a foil to the rest of society. His life and death showed the hopelessness of the society to whom he had been introduced. John's name alone served as the first clue to this. John. That name serves as placeholder when the name of someone is unknown. Secondly John dies silently in obscurity. He hangs himself and, I think, will be most likely forgotten by the society that doomed him.
ReplyDeleteI think Huxley utilized the life and death of his character to serve as a warning to our society that if we come to such a hopeless state we might not be able to save ourselves even if we tried just like John.