a brave new world response 2

In this portion of the book Bernard and Lenina visited the savage reservation in new Mexico. here we are introduced to the "savages", a group of people living on the equivalent of an Indian reservation. the people here birth their own children and live without higher technology not unlike most tribal cultures. the belief structure is a hybrid of native American beliefs and Christianity that seems like almost any other tribal religion. the vast majority of the people who live in this area cannot read and are of native American descent. it is here that Bernard meets Linda and John the Savage. Linda lived in the "civilized" world when she was younger but on a vacation to the reservation she got lost and was left. at the time of her disappearance she was pregnant, something considered unnatural and taboo in the "civilized" world, because of the lack of contraceptives and abortions she birthed the child, this child was named john. John and Linda are almost shunned from society for their different appearance and attitude due to Linda's conditioning. Unlike almost all other savages john can read due to Linda's tutelage, he only has two books, a notebook from linda's job describing innane techniques needed for such specialized work, and Shakespeare's complete collection. as it so happens the person who was on vacation with Linda when she was lost was none other than Bernard's malevolent boss. Bernard hatches a plan to bring Linda and John back in order to discredit his boss for having a child.

This section of the book is very interesting, at first I though the savages would be what we consider normal people, living in houses and such, and this would create a comedic tone because of the disgust our conditioned main characters would find in what we consider normal life. in reality a more interesting balance was wrought, it seems like Huxley makes the point that there can either be cleanliness, ignorance, bliss, and a lack of self, or utter insanity, but with the ability make your own choices. the "Civilized" world lacks any individuality , choice, or sense of self, but the "savages" offer unscientific, highly superstitious nonsense. there seems to be no middle ground in the book, one cannot make logically informed choices in either situation so the question arises, should we live in a world where there is no individual choice but the overall decisions are scientifically based, or is it better to have personal choice but no scientific logic to base it on.