After finally finishing the book, I found it over all to be disappointing. I felt as though it took forever to get to the point, the chapters in between were pretty good, the last few chapters fell short.

I am very disappointed when Linda dies. I think her death was provoked with all the soma that was being given to her. In my previous blog I spoke about how the doctor moderately told John how it could possibly kill her. I believe she died of an overdose and not of old age or any type of disease, true she didn’t have soma before her return to the New World but she did have the alcohol. To me it seemed the soma gave her the same affects as the alcohol did because she said “Pope! Oh I do so like it, I do”(pg 185) to John. Her death might not have seem to affect the story much because at this point she was always on holiday and no one seemed to pay her any attention. I believe her death is important because I feel it affected John in a very strong way although it might not say that in the story. In the New World death was normal and nothing to be sad about, but where John was from it was a life changing moment. No one had a bond like the one he had with Linda because having a mother wasn’t something someone had.

The stunt the savaged pulled while the workers were about to get soma after their shift was over, to me I think was because of his mothers death. I think he believes that so much soma is what killed her and he wanted to put a stop to it. If Linda were still alive I think she would have been able to stop him, to me she was able to better explain things to him as to why things were the way they were. She did this best because she knew how to compare it to things that he was used to for him to better understand, but she wasn’t there this time to talk him out of it.

The fact the Helmholtz helped “And suddenly there was Helmholtz at his side-‘Good old Helmholtz!’ also punching-‘Men at last!’- and in the interval also throwing the poison out by handfuls through the open window”(pg193), he savage was important, because yes John wasn’t fro this world but it proved that even people who were from this world can have different thoughts and rebel because they aren’t as happy as everyone thinks they should be. I would have thought that Bernard would have helped them instead of being a coward. “’Send me to an island?’ He jumped up, ran across the room, and stood gesticulating in front of the Controller. ’You can’t send me. I haven’t done anything it was the others. I swear it was the others. He pointed accusingly to Helmholtz and the Savage (pg203).The reason I say this is because he was always viewed as an outsider, so maybe he could have used this as a way to get revenge or prove a point to everyone. Another reason as to why I think he should have helped was because he was the one who brought the savage into this New World, so I feel as though he should take some sort of blame, being that the savage isn’t accustomed to what’s right and wrong and because he doesn’t think like the rest do. Helmholtz was his only friend even before his new found popularity, he never judged Bernard, or denied him of a friendship when he was in trouble so for Bernard to throw him under the bus like that shows he was never really his friend to begin with.

I didn’t like the way the story ended John to me was such a strong character and had such strong views that with the right help could have changed the New World for better. I think that instead of Helmholtz leaving to another island he should have went with John only because of the strong friendship they had built. Had they went of together I think they could have made some changes and the story wouldn’t have ended up John’s downfall. I really wonder why Huxley ended the story this way.