The Death of John the Savage

     I finished Brave New World by Aldous Huxley just a little while ago, but after looking back at my essays, I realized that John's death was an interesting death. The ambiguity and the confusion of his death was, I realized, very important in the analyzation of this book. His death pushed me to search for the reason as to why he died, thus also prompting me to look at the book deeper. There may have been many reasons why he died, Lenina being one of them and his isolation and loneliness being another but what I focused on afterwards were not these reasons but the meaning of his death.
     In this Brave New World, I realized that John being the main protagonist of opposing the will of the society didn't end up in triumph over this community. He didn't change anything about it and it actually ended with his death. He hung himself, suffocating until his soul left his body, and I think this is interesting because it gives off some major hints about the meaning of his death.
     Usually, the protagonist would triumph over the opposing character, which is in this case the utopia; however, in this novel, the protagonist lost. I think that what his death meant was that the new world was so major that in the end, he ended up suffocated under the new standards. He represented the old standards being choked out by the new standards set in place. Even now these things happen. Print-based culture was ultimately suffocated out for Image-based culture.
     To me, this makes Huxley's warning a bigger thing to look out for. Through this, he warns us that once we adopt new standards, and it becomes the majority, the old will never win once more. Do you guys disagree with this? Do you think that even in the end where the minority seems to have the right moralities, will still prevail over the majority? Or do you agree with Huxley that once new standards have been placed, there's no going back?

- Jeremy Daniel Lucero