The ending of Brave New World?

Question

I just finished reading Brave New World and I am really confused...Can someone explain to me what happened in chapter 18...
I mean i understand that John hung himself but I was reading on sparknotes and it says that he took soma but I didn't notice that happening in the book?

Answer 1

Chapter 18

"Summary: Helmholtz and Bernard go to visit John, who is throwing up in his room. When they ask him what is wrong, he replies, "I ate civilization... It poisoned me." John then tells the two men that he had visited Mustapha Mond that morning and asked if he could join them on the island. Mustapha refused his request, indicating that he wanted to continue the experiment. (The experiment can be understood as an attempt to reconcile John to the Utopian civilization.)

Seeking solitude, John runs away from the society and finds an abandoned lighthouse which he makes his home. He spends the first night on his knees in contrition and repentance to his gods so that he will be worthy to enter the lighthouse and inhabit it. John quickly starts to make a bow and arrows in order to shoot game for food. He also sets up a small garden to provide food for the next year. While making the bow John starts singing, but then he recalls his vows to remember Linda and make amends to her soul. Out of anger at his forgetfulness, John starts to beat himself with a knotted cord.

Three Delta-Minus landworkers passing by happen to see John beating himself. They are amazed by this incredible display and return to the town where they tell everyone about it. Three days later reporters begin to arrive, trying to get an interview. John literally kicks the first man to approach him so hard the man cannot sit down well afterwards. The other reporters get the same treatment and quickly start to leave him alone. A few hover in helicopters, but when he shoots an arrow through the floor of the nearest one they too back off.

A few days later, while digging in his garden, John starts to think about Lenina. He immediately tries to get her out of his mind by masochisticly running into some thorn bushes, but he still remembers the smell of her perfume. He then grabs for his whip and begins to lash himself on the back ferociously.

Unluckily, a reporter named Darwin Bonaparte is hiding in the woods and records the entire scene. The movie is made into a feelie and within a day of its release several hundred helicopters arrive at the lighthouse to with spectators. A huge crowd forms and they all start shouting for him to use the whip. While they are chanting the phrase, "We - want - the whip," a helicopter arrives with Henry Foster and Lenina.

Lenina steps out of the helicopter and starts to talk to John, but he cannot hear her over the roar of the crowd. His confusion suddenly turns to rage and he rushes at her with the whip, beating her over and over again. He is desperate to kill the flesh. In this state of hysteria the crowd suddenly starts to chant Orgy-porgy. They start dancing and singing, until eventually John gets caught up in the hysteria.

Several hours later John is lying on the heather in a soma induced sleep. The reader is told that the evening was a sensual frenzy. When he wakes up and remembers what took place, he cries, "Oh, my God, my God!"

That night the spectators that arrive cannot find him. They enter the lighthouse and see a pair of feet dangling from the archway. John has committed suicide.

Analysis: This chapter is partially anticlimactic following the previous chapter where John cries, "I claim them all," thus demanding the right to anything which would make him unhappy. Thus this chapter deals more with the interplay of solitude and society, sensuality and religion. John goes off on his own to recapture everything which the Utopian society has gotten rid of: namely religion, love, remembrance, pain, and abstinence.

The deluge of people who come to watch John beat himself with the whip marks the last chance John has to join the Utopian world. Lenina's arrival spurs him into a rage because in his mind she epitomizes everything evil about her world. She represents a sensual being who manages to come between John and his mother, she defiles his abstinence, and she makes him forget his religion. Thus when John sees Lenina he furiously is inspired to attack her.

The ending is different than the reader would expect. The crowd makes a sadomasochistic transformation from demanding to see pain to demanding sexual gratification. Thus the cry of "Orgy-porgy" is taken up and the people start to dance with each other. The cry is likened by Huxley to the beat of the Indian music. Thus it can be inferred that at some point John is overcome by the crowd and joins in.

Joining the crowd marks John's sacrifice of his last remnants of individualism. He goes from being one man standing alone against a mob of Utopians to becoming a member of that crowd. This sacrifice turns out to be too much for John, and so he is found the next evening hanging from the archway.

Why Mustapha decides to keep John as part of an ongoing experiment is obscure. After all, he is willing to send other misfits within the society like Helmholtz and Bernard to an island. There is therefore no logical reason to make John stay. A possibility is that Mustapha views John as a kindred spirit via the Shakespeare that they have both read. His reason for keeping John is that he wants to convert John into rejecting Shakespeare and into accepting the Utopian dogma. However, as the ending shows, accepting Utopia means giving up everything that makes John an individual human being. Thus for Mustapha, the experiment fails."

Answer 2

Brave New World Chapter 18

Answer 3

John takes part in an orgy the night before he hangs himself, the orgy itself initiated after he attempts to whip Lenina in front of the crowd.

""Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather."

He then wakes up, and horrified at his behaviour the previous day, hangs himself.

I don't think sparknotes says he is killed by the soma.

Answer 4

some books are not like sitcoms. read more carefully, the writer is trusting in your intelligence.