Chapter VII - Overall Analysis

In this chapter, Lenina and Bernard are at the Savage Reservation and are met face to face with the queer savages, including John the Savage and his mother Linda.

Lenina is quite annoying in this chapter. Her selfish ways are obviously apparent and she does not try to hide it. It bothered me that she would act so openly disgusted by the savage ways.

It is also obvious that Lenina is obsessed and brainwashed by the society. Everything that the savages wear or do reminds her of something from their society, "naked from throat to navel, their dark-brown bodies painted with lines ('like asphalt tennis courts,' Lenina was later to explain)" (VII, 93). Such similes that Lenina make create a sense that she truly hates it at the Reservation and would nothing more but to be pampered and spoiled in her society once again.
Lenina's attitude towards everything is like that of a child's. She feels that she must be the center of attention and if she does not like something then she will complain about it constantly.

One of the more interesting parts in this chapter is the description of Linda. She is described in such a hideous way and yet that it the way people should look with all the 'wrinkles' and 'flabbiness' - perhaps at not such an extreme but nevertheless she is humanistic. Linda wishes for her life to be back to the finer things in the society, yet she is able to survive in a Savage Reservation.
It made me believe that perhaps if their society changed back to being unstable, things would not be as chaotic and destructive as many would think. However, at the same time, Linda still clings onto the morals of the society and believes that, "Everything they [the savages] do is mad", as they mend clothes instead of buying new ones and have one person for another, instead of everybody belonging to everyone else.

The most interesting part in this chapter is when Linda talks about John. She sees John as being mad just as the savages and that he had to be conditioned,
"Though you've no idea how difficult that is. There's so much one doesn't know; it wasn't my business to know. I mean, when a child asks you how a helicopter works or who made the world - well, what are you to answer if you're a Beta and have always worked in the Fertilizing Room? What are you to answer?"
This statement is quite important to the overall effect of the book. How is it that the World Controllers can decide on what to condition for which people? Why are they allowed to decide what is 'important'? It is ludicrously true that there is so much that we don't know, and yet we have this egotistical belief that we are allowed to 'condition' our generations because we are older and wiser, but sometimes they may know more than we know. So, who is more correct and should be allowed to condition, say, a whole society?