Chapter VII - Summary

Lenina and Bernard are hiking up to the top of the hill behind their Indian guide on which the Savage Reservation lies. Lenina is complaining about how 'queer' everything is, how the guide smells bad, and how she does not like walking. Suddenly, there were drums beating and they suddenly were in pace with the beating drum and had quickened their pace.
Lenina made references from the Savage Reservation constantly to their society, such as the natives' bodies painted with white lines were like 'asphalt tennis courts'. The Indians were dressed in furs, feathers, and rattling beads.

Lenina is scared when she sees them dancing with snakes and the fact that they seemed to ignore her existence in their home. She does not understand how they could live in all the mud, dogs, and garbage.
Bernard explains to her that they do not know any differently and that this is how life should be lived, even if their society calls for cleanliness and sterilization.
Lenina, and Bernard (who kept it hidden), were both shocked to see a very old man with long grey hair and almost no muscles on his body. Bernard explains that due to their society's uses of transfusions of young blood, they can artificially keep a balanced youthful equilibrium inside their bodies and be preserved from diseases that allows them not to look like that.

Lenina is horrified and tries to reach for her soma bottle, but realizes she left it at the rest-house and that Bernard also had none with him.

They then see two young women breastfeeding their babies. Lenina blushes and turns away thinking that that it is the most indecent thing she has ever seen in her life. Bernard however was making comments about it and how intimate it is. He is excited and begins pondering what it is like to have a mother and what if Lenina were a mother. Lenina is horrified and begs to be taken away from the scene.

The guide takes them down by where they live and they witness how the Indians live - there are dead dogs lying on the street, mothers looking for lice in children's hair, there were fur blankets baking in the sun, and the Indians were dancing in the main area.
Lenina actually liked the drums only because they were similar to the beats in the society's 'Orgy-porgy' song. The Indians began singing and Lenina thought it was 'queer' that there was disease and old people with weird clothing, but their performance overall was 'nothing specially queer' in her eyes as it reminded her of a lower rank's Community Sing.

Suddenly, the Indians begin a ritual. They began dancing around the circle getting faster and shrieking as they went round. They began to toss out snakes and dance with them. The old man silenced the crowd with his hand and beckoned forth an eagle image and the Christianity symbol of Jesus on the cross. The old man then clapped his hands and a young boy of about eighteen came forth, wearing almost nothing.
The old man made the cross sign over him and turned away. The young boy began to walk around the heap of snakes. The men around the crowd began to whip the boy, but the boy would not make a sound.

Lenina began to sob. She cried for it to stop and wished she had her soma. The boy fell and the old man placed a white feather over the boy's bloodied back and sprinkled it onto the snake pit. The dancers broke out again and the drums began to beat. The crowd left and only the boy remained, bloody on the ground.

A man came forth, only he was white with bronzed skin, with straw-coloured hair and pale blue eyes. He asked them if they were civilized and from outside of the Reservation in English. Bernard was astonished at the man and was about to ask who he was until the man interrupted him.
The man explained that he wished he had been the sacrifice but the Indians disliked him for the colour of his skin and denied him from joining. He explains that this sacrifice is to pray for rain and growth of corn.

Lenina looks up at the man for the first time and the man is shocked by her beauty. He is embarrassed and she is thinking that he is a nice-looking boy with a beautiful body.
Bernard interrupts by asking questions about the man. The man tries his best to avoid looking at Lenina and explains that him and his mother, Linda lived in the Reservation. His mother used to come from the 'Other Place' (or Bernard and Lenina's society) long ago with a man who was his father. She had fallen down a steep place and hurt her head. Some of the hunters from Malpais (the Reservation) had found her and brought her to village. She never saw the man who is his father (as we find out is the Director) again.
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Bernard and Lenina follow the man to his home on the outskirts of the village. Linda came out and Lenina shuddered at the sight of her. She had wrinkles, her front teeth were missing, with bloodshot eyes, and ragged skin. She had a stomach bulge and smelt of alcohol. Lenina found the sight of her much more worse than the old man with the bones showing through his skin.

Linda burst into tears and began hugging Lenina. Linda began to talk about how she has not seen civilized clothing and faces in years. She says she suffered for so long without a gramme of soma. She had mescal and peyotl (which are drugs from plants), but they made people feel sick and hungover afterwards. We also learn that her son's name is John.

Linda was so ashamed that a Beta like herself had a child. She swears she used her contraceptives and there was no Abortion Centre, unlike the one by Chelsea in London.
Linda recalls the society she used to come from and starts to cry again. She apologizes for her rudeness after she blows her nose on her tunic, but she tries to make them realize that there is nothing else to use and that there is so much filth everywhere.

Linda used to work in the fertilizing room and how she had to try to adjust her life to the 'dirty' world. She said that at the Reservation, everybody does not belong to everybody else. She had to undergo a great ordeal involving the rest of the women in the tribe that did not understand nor enjoy her 'society' ways.

The chapter ends with her talking about John (John and Bernard left the room after a while) and how he was a comfort to her even though she did not want him. She feels that he is mad, like the rest of the Indians and that he must have gotten it from it. She did not know how to answer to his many questions as a child as she was just a Beta who has always worked in a Fertilizing Room.