She concludes that John spends too much time with the Indians to become truly civilized. She also struggled to condition John to the ways of civilized society but apparently failed. Linda explains that she used to let all the men come to her for sex, as civilized people should, but that all the other women got mad.

Although Lenina feels disgusted by Linda, she feels forced to listen. She describes how she ended up on the reservation and pregnant with John even though she took all precautions with the Director. She complains that there is too much dirt and that she has to drink mescal (alcohol) and use peyote, a hallucinatory drug, in place of soma. Bernard concludes that John's mother was the woman the Director had taken to the reservation twenty-five years ago.īernard and Lenina meet Linda, John's mother, who rejoices at seeing civilized people again. He explains that his mother was like Lenina, a woman from civilized society, who some hunters had saved. The Savage, whose name is John, tells them that he is upset that the other Indians will not let him participate in the ritual because of his skin color.

The other Indians worship a statue of a man on a cross and an eagle.Īfter the ritual, they meet a blond-haired man with blue eyes. While walking, the young man receives a whipping until he falls and dies. Bernard and Lenina watch a ritual dance of sacrifice to the gods Pookong and Jesus, where a young man slowly proceeds around a pile of snakes in the center of the Pueblo square. However, Bernard feels a strange fascination with the scene.

She then discovers that both she and Bernard forgot their soma, so she has to see the village consciously rather than through the veil of the narcotic. Since there is no live birth in the outside society, Lenina finds the scene of a woman nursing a child to be disgusting.

The Indian guide leads Bernard and Lenina into the reservation, where the smells and the sight of poverty, disease, and old age immediately assault them.

Chapter 8 brave new world summary