Chapter Seventeen and Eighteen

John continues his conversation with Mustapha Mond and talks of religion and speaks of the religion that once was before the World State reigned over civilization. He says that religion and things like love no longer implicated because they short it gives the people the right to be unhappy. By being eliminates, society is neither happy nor unhappy but neutral. I find it fascinating how the people of this book have lived their lives. They have nothing to look forward to because they cannot experience anything in life that is worth living for, but they do not know the difference because they have been conditioned otherwise. John decides that he will not live this way.

Once John is exiled he begins his quest to cleanse himself from the poison of civilization. It seems John has completely snapped at this point and is only further driving himself to insanity. As he whips himself to punish himself for his sins, people take notice. This leads to a group of reporters going to his new home and disturbing him and interfering with his quest. Lenina arrives at the scene and John charges at her and attacks her. In my perspective, at this point John is completely insane. He attacked the only person he could ever be close to loving and whipped her. In the middle of the night he woke up and remembered what he had done and is horrified. The novel ends with him hanging himself.

I found the ending of this novel haunting. The only person in this novel who truly wanted to experience the beauties of life was driven to insanity from the society implicated by the World State. As he longed for love, creativity and freedom, he creeped closer to insanity and punished himself for his wrongdoings. This novel ends on a strange note because no conflict is resolved. I think the other is trying to show us that the nature of humans cannot change. No matter how much conditioning people undergo, sometimes the mind will overcome it. Mustapha Mond states that people are solely driven by conditioning but John proves him wrong by living through instincts. Ironically his instincts drove him mad in a world that shows little emotion or suffering.

The disturbing manner that the author uses to portray the death of John is most definitely not appropriate for all readers. As readers edge closer to the end of this novel, I picture them becoming more and more horrified by it's contents. This would certainly be a good argument to ban the novel. However I did gain something by reading this novel. By writing this book, Aldous Huxley has shown us that a human society without the choice to live one's life the way they would like will one day crumble. It has shown me that the human mind can be easily fooled into thinking and believing anything that is imprinted on it in immense amounts. However, this takes away from true happiness that in many cases will lead people to overpower their conditioning and want more from life.

I think that this book is definitely only suitable for mature readers because of it's strange content but I would never promote the banning of this book. By reading this book, most people can begin to further understand human nature which I believe is worth reading this book for. Although this book contains mature content, that gives no one the right to ban it for all people to read because you can only learn from this book. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to anyone who is in their teens and older.