What a turn to the story! The last couple of chapters of Brave New World lead us to a plot twist. I believed that the story would end in the change of civilization. When John, Bernard, Helmholtz, and Mustapha Mond were conversing after John’s outburst about how Mond believed in what John believed, I thought there was going to be a happy ending. But, in all reality, the ending of this story was pretty sad. The story of Brave New World ends in John’s downfall, which baffles me because I believed that out of all of the characters in this story, John was the strongest. After seeing Bernard’s change, I thought that John would be the one to change society and get through to The Controllers. When John escaped to the lighthouse, I though he would be a happier person, maybe find the woman he wanted and go against civilization and conceive a child. I even had hope of him running into Lenina and them living happily ever after. But I was wrong, John ended up taking his own life, not being able to bear the chaotic scene that occurred at the light house with the whipping of Lenina, and the crowd of people, and the helicopters.
In chapters 14-18 we learn a lot about the characters of Brave New World. We find out that Bernard is a coward, especially in the chapter where John, Helmholtz and himself were taken to Mustapha Mond after John went completely insane at the Park lane Hospital for the Dying. To me, John was never fully sane, maybe this is because of his upbringing at the reservation. Once his mother died, he became even crazier. His anger elevated. The simplest things would tick him off. For example, when John was at the Park lane Hospital of the dying, before his mother passed away, he attacked the nurse. He also pushed toddlers around and while explaining to the people of London that they are not truly free, he threw a fit and ended up starting a riot between the classes.
John hit the fan when he escaped to the lighthouse. He used mustard and hot water to turn his insides and make himself sick. He also whipped himself. Chapter 18 states “Three Delta-Minus workers from one of the Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups happened to be driving to El-stead and, at the top of the hill, were astonished to see a young man standing outside the abandoned lighthouse stripped to the waist and hitting himself with a whip of knotted cords.” After this event, John began to receive visits from reporters. He also threw himself into a bush of thorns to get the image of Lenina out of his head. Chapter 18 states “At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper bushes. He flung himself against them, he embraced, not the smooth body of his desires, but an armful of green spikes.” John must have had a high tolerance of pain. You would think one would pass out from all of this self torture or at least stop hurting themselves. This also proves the insanity of John.
The whipping incident was the beginning to John’s downfall. And in the end John ended up hanging himself from all the terrorization he was receiving from “the outsiders.” If he continued living the way he was, he most likely would have been brought back to the London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre and be put under the eyes of everyone like an animal in a cage.
