The reader should note the racially charged assumptions underlying Huxley's satire of the feelies, the plot revolving around a black man's abduction and rape of a white woman. The story is pornographic, but conservative, containing nothing at all to introduce doubts into a viewer's sense of social order. Huxley's presentation of John's experience, however, makes clear the strengths and weaknesses of the form, which Mustapha Mond describes in Chapter 16 as "practically nothing but pure sensation."Īs the chapter reveals, the feelies exist simply to soothe and titillate the senses, while leaving the mind (or, rather, one's conditioning) untouched. Bernard, the reader recalls, disdained the feelies as beneath his intellectual dignity. The chapter also offers a detailed description of the feelies, the popular entertainment that combines the senses of smell and touch in a movie format. The moment represents a rare connection for the displaced character. Shaw uses the word "eternity" - a concept John recognizes from Shakespeare's poetry.
In explaining what he regards as soma's benefits, Dr. Soma, however, is new to John, and his worry about the drug shortening his mother's life gives Huxley the opportunity to expand on soma once again. Huxley has introduced the effects of soma very early in the novel, and so the reader is not surprised to find Linda on a more or less perpetual soma holiday now that the drug is available to her once more. In this chapter, Huxley features John's discovery of the activities that come closest to imagination and poetry in the world of Fordian London - taking soma and going to the feelies. He feels unworthy of her, while she is confused and frustrated. He also goes on a date with Lenina to a feely - which he compares unfavorably to Othello.Īt the end of the date, John disappoints Lenina, dropping her off at her apartment without staying for sex. He vomits during a tour of a Fordian factory and discovers on his visit to Eton that the library there contains no Shakespeare. John, meanwhile, experiences a growing disillusionment with this "Brave New World" (as he quotes Shakespeare). Bernard boasts to Helmholtz about his sexual conquests and lectures Mustapha Mond in a report - offending both of them.
She is taking ever higher dosages that will eventually lead to her death.īernard suddenly finds himself popular because all upper-caste London wants to see John the Savage. has resigned because of the scandal, and Linda has slipped into a permanent soma-holiday.
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