Chapter VIII - Summary

Bernard and John are walking slowly down the village's streets.

Bernard discusses with John that he finds this situation hard to understand. He asks John to recall his life to as far as he can remember.
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Linda is lying next to John in their bed singing 'Bye, Baby banting, soon you'll need decanting' after a large supper and he falls asleep.
He wakes up to a loud noise. There is a large and terrifying man talking beside the bed, and Linda is laughing at what he is saying. Suddenly Linda says, "Not with John here," and John becomes more terrified. The man rips John away from Linda and throws him outside of the door. John tries to open the door and calls out to Linda but no one comes.
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John is in a huge room with other children as Linda is helping the women make blankets. A long time later, a crying Linda is being pushed out of the room and Linda storms off. John follows her as she makes comments of how they are 'beastly savages' for kicking her out because she broke something during weaving.
They go back to their house and a man named Popé is there with a large gourd full of mescal - a drink that smelt bad and burnt the mouth. After Popé and Linda drank some of the gourd, they went into the other room. Popé left sometime later and John found that he could not wake Linda from her deep slumber.

John hated Popé. He hated every one of the men that came to visit Linda. He recalls one cold afternoon when he came back to the house after playing with children. Linda was screaming and there were people screaming and loud crashing happening in the bedroom. John ran inside and found women holding Linda down and whipping her. John cried for them to stop and bit the woman's hand with the whip and the woman pushed John down and whipped him three times.
That night John and Linda cried together. John did not understand why they hurt not only him, but why they had hurt Linda. He found those people so unfair.

Linda cried and said she did not understand why either and she muttered something about how they had said 'those men are their men'. John did not understand and Linda began crying and muttering to herself even more. John tried to comfort her by putting his arm around her neck, but Linda twinged at the pain in her shoulder and pushed him away. She yelled at John and began slapping him, saying how she would not be his mother and how she has turned into a savage and that she can never go back to the society now.
Linda raised her hand to strike him again but suddenly she put his arms around him and kissed him over and over again.

Linda was depressed and did not get up at all for several days. She would sometimes drink the mescal and fall asleep. She often forgot to bathe and feed him and he remembered when she found 'little animals' in his hair and how she had screamed.
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John remembers that one of the happiest times were when Linda told him about the 'Other Place'. Linda told him about how you could fly, and there were delicious things to eat, beautiful music, there were houses and everybody was always happy. Everyone belonged to everyone else and there were babies in clean bottles - everything was clean and no one was ever alone.
Everyday John listened to Linda's talk of the Other Place.
John also loved that when he and the other children were tired of playing, one of the old men would tell them great stories of the Transformer of the World, the twins of War and Chance, and other wild stories. John loved all of these strange stories and would lie in bed thinking about Heaven, London, the Lady of Acoma, rows of babies in bottles, and Jesus and Linda flying up in the sky.
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John recalls a time that children made fun of Linda and how they called her bad names due to the number of men that would come to see her. John grew mad and threw rocks at them, but they threw them back and cut his cheek. He ended up being covered in blood.
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Linda taught John to read as well. She would draw pictures on the wall and write letters and John was able to learn them quickly. She told John that when he was bigger he would be able to read some of the books she had but when John took a long time just to read the title, "The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo. Practical Instructions for Beta Embryo-Store Workers", John threw the book on the floor and called it 'beastly'.
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The children are still singing horrible taunting songs about Linda, but they also tease John about his tattered clothes, since Linda does not know how to mend he wears rags. John pretends not to be bothered by the teasing by reminding himself that he is smarter because he can read and they can't.

John questions Linda often about things in the books he reads but Linda cannot answer majority of them, and when she does he does not understand, because she was an embryo worker and only knows about that. John decides to ask the old men of the village and they always give him a definite, but highly spiritual and mythical answer.

One day, when John was about twelve, Popé brought them a thick old book filled with all of Shakespeares' collections. Linda said it was definitely old because the contents were 'uncivilized'. John began to read it and was completely emersed in the Shakespearean language. He found it magical and beautiful and described as being like old Mitsima (the old mystical man in the village) saying magic but it was a lot more amazing, 'because it talked to him' even if he did not understand the words entirely.

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John describes that he is hating Popé more and more. He calls him 'lecherous' and a 'kindless villain' even though he only has an idea what the words mean. John describes the words he has as magical and sing to him like drums. They gave him a reason for hating Popé which eventually went a little too far.

John recalls coming in from playing outside one day and finds Linda and Popé sleeping in the bed together completely naked. John was devestated, 'his heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole'. He felt an extreme rush of emotion and recalled Shakespeare,

"When he is drink asleep, or in his rage
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed..."

He felt as though the 'magic' was telling him what to do - John grabbed a knife and stabbed Popé twice in the shoulder. Popé awoke and caught John's wrist before he could strike again. Popé made John look into his eyes while Linda awoke and began wailing about the blood. Popé laughs and calls John brave and allows him to run away so John may hide his tears.
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Mitsima is teaching John the ways of the Indian. They go by the river and begin to mold clay. John's clay pot is laughable beside Mitsima but they continue to create clay pots all day. John is glowing and starts singing a song from the Other Place about Vitamin D and cods in the sea while Mitsima sings about killing a bear. Mitsima tells John that next winter he will teach him how to create a bow.
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John and Linda are at an Indian wedding. A man, Kothlu, came out of the house with his right hand stretched out to his side and closed, as if holding something. Kiakimé, a young girl, does the same and they walk in silence as their brothers, sisters, cousins, and crowd follow. They stand at the edge of the cliff together and Mitsima marries them. John runs away after the wedding to be alone. He reveals he had been hopelessly and completely in love with the girl who had just gotten married and he felt that he was 'finished'.
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John was waiting in the moonlight with the rest of the young boys. They were to go down to the 'Antelope Kiva' where secrets would be told and they would come out as men. John was beginning his climb down to the depths when a man pulled him out of the line. John desperately tried to return but the men called him the 'son of a she-dog' and that he was not welcome to join. They threw stones at him and he began to bleed. He ran away and found himself on the edge of the cliff. He debated whether or not he should jump and end it all. He held out his wrist where he had been cut and watched the blood drip slowly in the darkness.

He had discovered Time, Death, and God.
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Bernard and John are still walking around the village.

John says that he is 'alone, always alone', and Bernard confesses he feels terribly alone as well. John is surprised as he knows that in the 'Other Place' nobody is every alone. Bernard blushes and says that he is rather different from the others but John understands completely. He says that, "If one's different, one's bound to be lonely".

He confesses that when he was not allowed to join the rest of the boys in the ritual, he went to do it by himself. He starved himself for five days and spent the night alone in the mountains and said he had his own spiritual dream. He also states that he used to stand like Jesus does on the crucifix, just to see what it felt like. He said it felt like it was something he just had to do and that he ended up fainting.

Bernard begins to think that there is something better to cure unhappiness than just soma...

Bernard then asks John if he would like to come back to London with him and Lenina, mostly to use him as blackmail against the Director as he realizes that he is the father to the 'savage'.
John is ecstatic and asks if Linda can come too. Bernard is hesitant as Linda would be seen as much too revolting in the society but decides that she might be an enormous asset.

John is euphoric. He cannot wait to see all the women there, as he sees Lenina as an angel. He suddenly asks Bernard if he is married to Lenina by which he responds by immediate laughter at such a ridiculous question. John began laughing as well but from pure joy and exclaims, "O brave new world that has such people in it. Let's start at once".

Bernard finds John's way of talking peculiar and does not understand why he is so excited. He feels that John should wait until he actually sees the new world before getting so hyped up.