Brave New World response 3

It is during it's third act that this book gets most interesting, Bernard, John the Savage, and Linda all come back to London so Bernard can prove that his boss has a son. as soon as they come back John becomes a practical celebrity, being the only person born from "civilized" people, and not conditioned to boot. Bernard revels in the attention he gets from Johns onlookers, almost whoring John's appearances. When John is visiting his dying mother a bokanovsky group undergoing death conditioning enters the room and John breaks down, the sight of tons of twins all moving around the room is too much for him to handle and he goes on a minor rampage, throwing away a lot of soma in order to try to "liberate" the people from it's intoxicating grip. after this John, Helmholtz, and Bernard all go to speak to the world controller Mustapha Mond. Mond threatens to send them to Iceland in exile and Barnard Begins groveling and begging for mercy, he is taken away and Mond reveals that the islands are refuges for free thinkers, all of the most interesting people that society couldn't accept are put on these islands. Mustapha reveals that in his youth he held many of the same "anti-social" ideas that Bernard and Helmholtz have, he was almost sent to an island himself for some radical experiments bordering on real science. He decided that uniformity and happiness for all was more important saying, "actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery." after this John decides to live as a hermit in an abandoned lighthouse, constantly punishing himself because of his self imposed undeservingness. eventually his whereabouts are found and publicized, his peace disturbed by constant visitors and onlookers, eventually causing a massive orgy-fight of passion. the next day John's body is found hanging from the rafters of the lighthouse, dead by suicide.

This entire section of the book raised the most moral questions regarding different ideas of happiness and civilization in the entire book. The "Civilized" society is so utterly homogenous there is never any extraordinary pleasure or pain, everyone is in a perpetual state of sameness. all of us have profound moments of sheer happiness, but also profound moments of sheer discomfort, without these defining moments we are not as human as we once were, we become more like a cell in a body than an individual being. by losing any independence we once had we lose all personal power to those controlling us. the concepts at work in this book can often be sen in our society now, loners are often considered lesser people, people who are unwilling to participate in arbitrary social activities that really do nothing are shunned. people who can see through the veil of irrational human desire are discounted and dismissed from society. it takes a person who can see through this veil and can also see the veil itself to truly affect things. John the savage does not see this, he only sees how incredibly stupid the whole thing is, he cannot see the means to change this stupidity and so he retreats into an irrational life of unnecessary self punishment and religion. this story contains many interesting aspects of society that I myself have been thinking about lately, about the changing of human attitude to fit with society and vice versa. it poses many questions about where to draw the line of the importance between humanity and society. I greatly enjoyed this book and the problems it posed on my own thought processes.