Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north- east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east…
Interpret this final paragraph of the book--not just as John Savage's end, but also in light of the simile that Huxley uses. What was John seeking, and how did he fare in his quest? Does he represent anyone besides himself?
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There are several different aspects to this final passage. You have the simile comparing the feet to compass needles, as well as the diction to consider when interpreting this paragraph.
The first thought that came into my head was directly related to John. His body is likened to a compass, shifting from north to south and back again. I think this may correspond to the various protagonists' moral compasses. Helmholtz is persuaded by Mond, Bernard falls to corruption through power, and in the end, John succumbs to soma and temptations of the flesh. All of their moral compasses are at some point pointed away from good.
Another way of looking at it might be that this final image sums up the book. John is suddenly dead through suicide brought on by realization that he had fallen victem to immorality. In the wider world, immorality brought about the destruction of much of the human population (the use of anthrax bombs). After this sudden upheaval, civilization gradually shifted in the direction that science was going; away from truth and towards happiness (turning from north to south). Now it comes back to John, who, once he has shifted from truth and into happiness, kills himself. Some people might say that the populace in Brave New World aren't really living either. John realizes what he had done and goes back to truth, but in doing so commits suicide. This might be what the "compass" ending at east - between north and south - signifies. If the world were to attempt a shift back to truth and away from happiness, it's very likely that the world would be similarly torn apart.
A third interpretation stands that John symbolized humanity's moral compass. He is dead, just as morality in the civilized world is dead. However, even though morality has died, the compass continues to function. There are still expectations people need to live up to, lest they be marked as outsiders like Bernard was.
I'm sure there are a good many more ways to look at this passage out there, but these three are the only reasonable explanations I could come up with.
The comparison of John to the ever changing direction of a compass needle is likely to symbolize how lost John was. The only world he was comfortable with (back in the Reserve) refused to accept him, while The Brave New World wouldn't leave him alone and viewed him as a zoo attraction more than anything else. He couldn't find a place in either world. Neither would think of him as just another human being, much less as an individual. John had no one to turn to. Either they didn't understand him (such as Bernard or Helmholtz) or they just didn't care (such as M.Mond, who wouldn't let John go away to an island so the 'experiment' could be continued).
In a way, John represents people in everyday society, in that John was a lost soul. So many people today say how they feel as though they don't fit in and are lost. And just like John, are seeking direction from someone who actually cares and can help. John was seeking direction from someone other than the typical 'Civilized' robot of society.
Huxley compares John’s feet to that of two compass needles because just as a compass continuously searches for north, John had been continuously searching for his sanity, for his sense of belonging, acceptance, and his way in life. His story is that of someone, who as an outcast in society, tries to find a place for himself. However, he is not able to find his sanity and peace of mind from either the World State or the Reservation. Even his “Walden” fails to give him the comfort and peace of mind he seeks. The trigger that ultimately ended his journey and led to his death is his betrayal of his ideals. Driven by the need for perfection and by “…his native Penitente-ism,” he feels suicide is the only choice left, that only in death can he find his sanity (viii). Though his death is highly depressing and cynical, it’s also predictable. For John, his ideals were everything; they set him apart from the others in that society and were the only thing that gave him self confidence and self value. When he broke his ideals and beliefs by engaging in the orgy porgy, to him, he had committed the ultimate sin, and thus, had to receive the ultimate punishment. However, he is lost, even in death. This is depicted by the restlessness and failure of the compass needles to find a “way”. His compass continues to move and rotate, because he never was able to find the peace or acceptance he so desparately sought.
This passage seems to resemble most of John’s struggles to survive, whether it is in the World State or in Malapais. The rotation of John’s feet to the right, symbolize his efforts to first “fit in” with the rest of society in Malapais, however, since his mother a father are from the “civilized world” and his skin color is quite lighter than the others, he is looked upon as an outsider. As his efforts slowly fail, he then enters the civilized world, thinking that there could be more acceptances for him. While there, he pushes himself to try these new technologies, and think in a happier and less thoughtful way. This new endeavor, of trying to embrace the World State, symbolizes his feet rotating back to the left.
First, he moves his feet to the right in a circular motion to resemble his efforts to fit in at the Reservation, but he is unsuccessful and his feet stop. Then by beginning to rotate to the left it exemplifies his efforts in the World State. His endeavors there are also, however, unsuccessful. Therefore, I believe that the endless rotation of Johns feet mirror his life, as the ultimate outsider, and his constant wandering in an endless circle.
The first thing popped out to me in this paragraph was the compass simile that many others have mentioned before. What I took out of this simile was similar to other students' responses, I too though about John's moral compass and humanity's compass and how htat related to the passage. But what really stuck out to me, or rather bugged me, was how John's feet pointed north to south and then just a little bit more. That in tandem with my idea about John's feet representing his moral compass as well as humanity's moral compass gave me an idea. The Brave New World that John lives has similarities to today but it is clearly a highly exaggerated view of today's world. They are on the same spectrum but on opposite ends, like north and south on a compass. Except that his feet don't stop at south, they continue to south-south-west and then turn back. They go just a little bit farther than south, just as John goes a little bit farther than "south" or civilization in the book. He has been pushed to an emotionally unstable state following his run in with Lenina and the death of his mother Linda, and therefore has been pushed to the south-south-west point on the compass. When he goes to live at the lighthouse he has begun to work his way back to humanity, or in compass terms is pushing towards north. But in this attempt he has a nervous break down, kills Lenina, and then takes his own life. We as a human society started at north, worked our way to the "south society" of Brave New World, and then John as an individual strove to rediscover humanity but only made it as far as south-south-west before he died.
That is what really stood out to me as I read this passage.
The final paragraph in Brave New World is fittingly haunting and strange. John, in the story, was the most misunderstood hero trying to fit in, someone any reader would be cheering to for. He is the hope of humanity as we know it, the advocate for art, history, religion, and the freedom to choose. His breakdown and eventual death show the inability of the human spirit to overcome. Despite his best efforts John could not overcome society. This emphasizes the themes in Brave New World concerning absolute control. He becomes a zoo animal, a circus freak, to the conditioned citizens. This highlights the complete lack of compassion in the new society. The way John died was also very fitting, self destruction. On the reservation John dreams of being sacrificed in order to help his people. For him it would have meant he was worthy of death, and excepted by the Savages. In the end it is his acceptance into a new society that results in his death. John kills himself after succumbing to the needs of the flesh and the animalistic behaviors of the others. His death is the end of humanity and the end of Brave New World. His feet turn unhurried pointing like a compass; the undirected lost human spirit, who has no place in a perfect world.
Aside from the physical aspect of John’s lifeless body oscillating freely, the meaning behind this final paragraph succinctly and cleverly concludes his story. The simile comparing his feet to compass needles signify, as mentioned before, his search for a place he never reaches (hence the reason his feet constantly turn); he continuously changes course of direction because, in his view, he has yet to acquire a satisfactory lifestyle.
Another important piece I noticed from this paragraph was how Huxley included “then paused,” and has the feet reverse direction—this has multiple meanings (I am listing the one that I strongly favor though). Somewhere in his journey, he appears to go against the ‘grain of society’--he completely rejects it. His deliberate act causing the soma conflict (where he ‘liberates’ the workers) after his mother’s death is an extreme case of how far he went.
I would also agree that it could be seen as John being lost and how he represents many people in our society that are lost as Shea wrote about.
similie
seeking
ohters?
I believe john was seeking a place to be accepted. The people wouldnt accept on the reservation nor the citizens of the brave new world wouldnt accept him. He was the son of a free spirit on the reservation, and a savage and freek in the brave new world. It seemed he had no place to belong. The compass similie illistrates this struggle that went on inside of him. He didnt know which way to go and what ideals he should support. He was always in the middles swinging back and forth between the two. He started out knowing the way of life on the reservation facing north, then he slowly went south in the brave new world, found that to be incorrect and slowly went north again. The simily shows his indecision as to what he felt was the correct civilization to believe in and how all he wanted was to belong but that was never attained.
The first association I made with the compass was something you use to find your direction. The entire span of Brave New World, John was searching for his place in society—he is an outcast on the Reservation, a circus freak in the World State. He was trying to find the path to achieve his freedom from these roles that bound him, but this search ended in his death. His body swinging slowly, rotating like a compass shows that John never found his true path. In Huxley’s forward, he explains his remorse that John didn’t have another choice between the savage reservation and the insane World State. Because John never found his freedom, he is still wandering even in death, his journey unresolved. He remains lost, a quivering compass needle.
The compass symbolizes finding the right path, which John was unable to do in the World State. He tries throughout the novel, but the only way he can escape the obstructions in his path is death. This is why Huxley gives the image of John’s feet rotating like a compass after his suicide.
Another point was brought up about the image in the final paragraph symbolizing a moral compass. After reading through these ideas, I decided that I view John as the moral compass in Brave New World. As Krista brought up, he represents art, humanity, history, religion, individuality—he fights for freedom, but in the end, he cannot win. Along with John’s death, hope dies with him. Huxley uses this to say that even the strong can’t survive. John was the only one who upheld the mortality. Once the moral compass dies, it is outnumbered and there is no hope for change. Everyone will return to their savagery.
The simile of John Savage's feet and two compass needles show a number of things. One, is how John's search for a place in the world was confusing and never-ending. John first tried to fit in with the other savsages but he was shunned because of his mother and his differences. He then tried to be a part of the World State but he could not understand the way of living with out God, art and other freedoms.
Along with representing how John was an outcast trying to find his place, this simile can also represent, like many other people said, the moral compass of humanity in both the Brave New World and our society today.
I also agree with what Shea said. That this can represent many people who are are lost and confused in the society they live in, just like John Savage. And also just like John, many give up looking for their place and commit suicide.
Brave New World concluded with a paragraph involving John’s dead feet moving and facing various directions, like compass needles, while his dead body is hung by his own will. This can symbolize a number of things. One of which is that even in death John cannot decide where to go, or which path to take, influenced and introduced to many ideas some of which contradict themselves, he is confused and feels alone and unaccepted, seeking to fit in. It could also represent others in the world like him who are trying to live up to ideals but find that they cannot succeed, like Huxley’s brother Trev, who find that the only way to escape, from their failure to meet a goal, is to escape from themselves, and that this is a common sentiment felt by many. Though there are many other interpretations, the third and final one in this paragraph is that perhaps that: the feet hold the body up which is the civilization, and the feet represent the direction we will take toward the future, but you can’t be fully sure of what direction the future is heading because the feet are not touching the ground, nor are they moving forward, they are simply turning toward the directions they can go toward, symbolizing no one is truly sure on where to go, but what will eventually cause the death of civilization, for it to not move forward and then simply vanish, is the suppression of it’s people ability to think freely and independently.
John’s dangling feet can be interpreted multiple ways. First, John is a character who from the very beginning is lost and confused. Raised by Linda, who was once a member of the World State, John is completely at odds with the rest of the natives. They exclude him from their rights of passage, from their games, and basically from their society. He has no acceptance there. Looking for some form of comfort, John learns to admire and marvel at, as he puts it, “…the Other Place, outside the Reservation: that beautiful, beautiful Other Place… as of a heaven, a paradise of goodness and loveliness” (206). He finds hope in knowing that there’s another place far better than where he is and where he would be accepted.
However, once John arrives in London and the World State with Bernard, he is once again ill at ease. He is gawked at and made a celebrity just because he’s a “Savage”. He can’t relate to any of the people there, except Helmholtz and, to a degree, Bernard. Falling in love with Lenina also makes him even more of a freak to society than he was before. At the end of the book, when he kills himself, he’s still completely at odds with the world. Thus, John’s feet pointing different directions may represent John’s struggle to find acceptance and not being able to receive it anywhere.
John’s feet may also represent Bernard’s challenges with society. Bernard is an Alpha but he’s looked down on because he’s smaller than normal Alphas are. He, like John, is not really accepted into society and this causes him a great amount of grief. When he brings back Linda and John, though, he suddenly becomes a celebrity. All sorts of high society people ask to dine at his house and he’s no longer an outcast. However, once John refuses to come to the dinner parties anymore, all of Bernard’s new “friends” abandon him and he’s once again a pariah, lost in society.
I agree with Hayden on the aspect of John's swinging back and forth to look for a place to stay, but I'm still undecided upon what to think about the compass directions. I suppose that one could say that North stands for his personal truth and guidance? In the same way that sailors use the Northern Star to search for their home, so does John. His familiar home would be Malapais, but then he turns back south to his "true home", per se.
I would also like to add a +1 to Matthew Putnam's "moral compass"; he and morality in the BNW are both dead, and yet they need to live up to a standard.
The simile of comparing the feet of John's dead body to a compass needle could be symbolic of many things. I choose to believe, that it is symbolic of John's lifelong search for peace and acceptance or sanity as Huxley would put it.That just as his body is every changing from north to south, one polar opposite to the other, so was he struggling to be part of two very different world. One being the commonly accepted world and the other being the one that made sense to him. Being shunned as a young boy and told stories about civilization I believe confused John about what the values should be in the world. Shakespear taught him values and made sense of the world, however, the civilization so clearly idolized by his mother frowned on his values, even mocked them.
John chose to end his life because he was extremely unhappy. i believe that John was seeking a connection between the two worlds, a common ground which he could understand and where he could be accepted. He was however, extremely unsuccessful and in the end chose the lesser of two evil worlds.meaning the world in which he faced his unhappiness. However, in his happiness he failed to see, as he might put it, the "girl at the end of the hoeing and the mosquitoes". It was because of his unhappiness that he was unable to face the world.
I also think that in the story John is meant to represent our personal beliefs and reactions in the book. And that his death is meant to symbolize the overcoming power of society. John's religious and shakespearian mind was unable to cope with the lack of values in civilization, just as the idea of treating people as meat and doing everything for the sake of consumerism repulses us. John's death is meant to symbolize that unless we are careful the John's of our own society will die out, and BNW will become reality.
In this paragraph John's feet represent compass needles. The different directions that his feet turn represent the different choices or paths he could have taken. He could have conformed to the Utopian-like society, He could have been sent to an island, or He could have been sent out on his own like he did in the book.
John was seeking a life where he could fit in. He wanted so badly to be a part of the society in Maipas, but they just wouldn't include him. He wanted to be a part of a place where he could read and share his thoughts about what he read, but that type of place no longer existed for him. Finally, after he has tried to become a part of a community, he seeks seclusion from the world. He isn't able to find this seclusion though, because he is followed by people who want to gawk at him and view him as someone would view an animal in the zoo.
I think in this book, John represnts people as a whole. We have are able to choose from many different paths in our life. In the world today we can become who ever we want and have as little or as much freedom as we want. We also want to be included and be a part of a society or community. We want to talk to people who think like ourselves and hear others' opinions as well. John wanted this sort of life so much, but was just not able to obtain it.
It is easy to understand that John succumbed to the pressures of the new society and hung himself, but it is the specialty of every great author to give every character and event a greater significance. In a society that disregarded any moral obligations, John represented a moral compass. He stood for all of the right values: truth, beauty, love, diversity, art, and choice. No matter how many answers Mustapha Mond had, John refused to accept his dangerous idealism of stability. Huxley emphasizes this simile in the quote as he describes the slow, purposeful motion of John’s feet in relation to the movement of compass needles.
The particular motion of John’s feet also has a strong connection to John’s journey through the book. Huxley describes John’s feet as moving right, to the south, then pausing and returning to their original position in the opposite direction. Huxley summarizes John’s attempt to humanize the modern world in just one sentence. John attempts to knock some sense into Bernard, Helmholtz, and even Mustapha Mond (to the extent which he would allow). He tried to emphasize all of the things they were unsatisfied about. For example, John introduces Helmholtz to Shakespeare and hopes to show him the advantages of personal expression. He even inadvertently helps Lenina experience ‘love’. These attempts are represented by the slow southward motion of the needle on the compass. However, the needle pauses and begins to move left. This is a representation of John’s failures in his quest. All characters return to their ignorance, and he gives up his frustrating discussion with Mustapha Mond to live in a secluded lighthouse. Finally, he even gives up against the incessant and insensitive taunting of the media and turns to eternal darkness and solitude, death.
John represents the world of art and literature (the world of imagination and personal expression) in our world today. He represents those people who try to preserve intellectual expression and entertainment amongst the ever-advancing world of technology and convenience. Fewer and fewer people read for pleasure, appreciate diversity, and believe in strong familial relationships, and turn to TV, ipods, promiscuity, etc. instead. The undermined world of art and literature today is represented by how John’s ideas and beliefs are disregarded by the modern society.
What struck me most about this passage was the sense of futility conveyed through the movement of John's feet. Throughout the novel, John sought acceptance - the acceptance of the tribe in Malpais, the acceptance of his father, the Director of World Hatcheries, and of others within the World State, others to whom such concepts as "love" and "family" were considered alien and abominable - yet found none; he took refuge in his ideals, in introspection, in self-harming, to escape such alienation, but with little result, as he simply had nothing for which to blame himself, not really. It wasn't his fault that he was the way he was any more than it was the fault of Epsilon Semi-Morons that they were the way they were, and it served him no good to hold himself responsible, to condemn himself as he did for falling prey to civilization's charms. In fact, it was that very sentiment that killed him, that compelled him to needlessly take his own life, and that it should seemed thoroughly indicative of Huxley's main point throughout the novel:
We are not responsible for what we cannot control. We do not ask for what we are given - we merely receive.
Society is humanity's vehicle for controlling what it cannot, and it is that misconception of civilization's true power over fate that kills John. After all, the World State takes it upon itself to do for all what ought to occur naturally to them: likes and dislikes, wants and needs, choices made and paths taken. How can anyone survive when stripped so cruelly of what makes them human?
The only kind of acceptance one truly requires, and the kind of acceptance John needed but never received, ought to come from one's self. We decide what is ours, not others, and it is that inability to govern himself that leads John in the circle that he travels, that forces John to continue in death that search for direction he could never complete, not when he depended so much upon others.
Yes, John was lost, but in a way much different than what is immediately noticeable.
Direction means nothing to you if you're already lost.
The compass is the classic navigational device, a gift to the lost. John was morally lost and had nowhere to go. He was confused and could not understand the restrictions that his new society placed on him. The grief of his mother's death seemed appropriate to him, but the reaction of the society to his terrible sorrow puzzled him. Following this, he met Mustapha Mond, who understood everything that John argued for but disagreed with his need for intrapersonal meditation and freedom of thoughts. This only served to further throw his moral compass off north. His punishment inflicted by himself upon himself was a step to find his morality and was a result of the confusion within at the contradictions of the moral compass in his heart and the compass that directed the rest of society. The final result of his feet circling like lost needles on a compass symbolizes that even in death he had no answers to his questions about his role in the world. John was still lost in death.
Huxley uses a simile comparing feet to a compass's needles. John looks for acceptance which he never truly finds. Almost like a broken compass, continuously spinning, John wanders between the world of Shakespeare, through which he views the world, and those of the World State and reservations where he grew up. He cannot belong to any of them out of no fault of his own. In his trials to find acceptance in the World State, he is unseccessful and unable to cope with the artificial happiness that surrounds him. John personafies the type of character who looks for acceptance yet in the end fails to find it without "losing himself" (giving into soma). John was in many ways similar to Aldous Huxley's brother Trevelyan. It seems Trevelyan was always reaching for the acceptance of his own family, who had members reknown for being outstanding scholars, scientists, and writers. In his own eyes he failed to deliver what was expected of him when he wasn't as good as his predecessors or his older sibling. This was completely unacceptable in the Huxley family.
The final paragraph in the book puts a strange twist into what is expected. As we become more familiar with John Savage, we expect him to be some sort of hero figure and one who enflames a change throughout the society, however, it is in this last paragraph that we find out that in order to escape the immoral ways of the society, he hangs himself.
Huxley created John Savage to represent the few true individuals in the society that do not succumb to the pressure brought out by the majority in order to persuade the minority to join the larger pool. At the end of the book, John Savage is portrayed running from a large crowd, as he is desperately trying to escape the hordes of people rushing towards him. John Savage finds how unhappy he is in the supposedly, "utopian" society and seeks in his isolation, a place where he can cleanse himself from the dirtiness of the social conventions. However, in his quest to attain happiness in the world, John eventually fails miserably and finds that his only escape from the treacherous society is through death. The fate that John so desperately chose has some parallels with Huxley's personal life. To be more specific, Trev Huxley, Aldous Huxley's brother, ended his life in a similar manner to John's, of which Trev also succumbed to the pressures and expectations of outside influences--- influences that he could not overcome. So, his only solution to the never ending problem was to take his life. The parallels in the reason for the deaths of Trev and John Savage are not coincidences. Aldous Huxley represented the inner turmoil of Trev Huxley in the form of John Savage and in the end, the similar situations of their deaths created a ending that would serve the purpose of concluding the book and inserting a memorial for Trev.
The simile at the end of the book can be interpreted into many meanings. One that I thought of was that the compass represents a moral compass and that instead of the needle pointing to what is right, it has nowhere to point because there are no governing principles. I think that the constant change in direction shows the inconsistency of morality. Instead of the needle always pointing one direction, the lack of humanity associated with the Brave New World forces the moral compass to wander.
I also think that the compass simile could represent what John was looking for in his life. When we first meet John he seems to know what he wants, but as he experiences society he begins to question everything that he had been taught. As the compass needle searches for a place to land, it resembles John’s continued (and never completed) search for purpose.
The simile of the compass and the needles represent John and the rest of societies morals and how they are affected.
When he first entered the World State he "had his head on straight," he knew the difference of right and wrong. His beefs had him pointed in the right direction, signified by the turning of the needle to the right. The compass pointed the furthermost to the right when John tried to explain the concept of liberty to the Deltas at the hospital. The initial environmental shock affirmed his beliefs but it was the environment that also caused him to rotate and turn his morals in the opposite direction.
After his long and heated debate over society and morals with Mustapha Mond, where i consider to be the point where the needle pauses, John begins his descent and rotation to the other side of the compass. The soma holiday, the orgy with Lenina, both of which he stood against earlier, the physical self abuse, and the attempt at controlling his thoughts and emotions, just as the World State did to the newly "born," slowly accumulated and rotated the compass towards the left. The compass never gets fully there because John makes sure it doesn't by taking his life.
John was seeking answers and understanding when he initially set off for the World State and he got he a big dose of both through his experiences, both visually and physically. His life was flipped upside down and during that process his morals were lost, although temporarily, enough for him to not bear himself.
The needles of the compass here are obviously representing the feet of John, who is dangling in air. They are moving with no objective in no particular direction which signifies the state of mind John was in; he was lost.
After entering the World State, he could not fit into the society's ways and questioned its absurd rules. He could not understand why art, history, religion, pain, etc were all outlawed. In the discussion with Mustapha Mond, John argues that these aspects are necessary in life as in his life back at the Reservation.
After leaving unsatisfied, John isolates himself from the society, which suggests his confusion and loneliness. He starts to go insane as in when he is whipping himself, and his state of mind crumbles. In the end, he even concedes to the ways of the World State by participating in an orgy taking soma, which he abhorred. John's mental condition deteriorated from the pressure of the rest of the society and led to his suicide.
John’s angle of his feet represent all of the people in this book that are struggling putting morality and civilization at the top of their compass, like John himself, Bernard, Helmhotlz, Mustapha (once upon a time), and probably of others that the book doesn’t even talk about.
Compasses point to true north, and metaphorically, these people that find trouble with their compasses are trying to lump morals and civilization together, and then looking at their compasses, but are surprised and frightened when they find their needle swinging from north to south and south to north and back again. Since we grew up with what we feel are good morals, when we read this book we can see that our morals and their civilization are polar opposites. We have family, they shun them; we fear death, they don’t care; we look for invisible guidance, they scoff at it and on and on. Our morals are not compatible with their society, but some people still feel a want for them, but just can’t find how they fit in. When they put civilization, in this sense, as the north of their compass, the compass would face south, but lump morals with it, and the needle feels a magnetization with north.
In the end, all must choose only one as their true north, civilization or morals. Mustapha choose civilization. Helmhotlz choose morals, as he values freedom to have emotions and to express them. Bernard chooses civilization early in the game, though with his fate, morals would have been better. But once you choose, you pass the threshold of no return. With John, we see what happens if you don’t choose, or you choose too late: you’re compass breaks, needle still swinging.
A compass, as a navigational tool, provides a concrete reference of direction. It ideally points in one direction, purposefully and decisively. By providing this reference, a reliable compass guides its user to the goal they seek.
But sometimes the needle of a compass wavers; it wanders and points without clarity. These compasses are struggling with interference from multiple forces—their “magnetic north” is being redefined.
In the journey of life, most of the citizens of the Brave New World are equipped with what can be described as reliable mental “compasses.” Their “compasses” solidly guide their users to what they seek, be that pleasure, acceptance, stability, or what have you. Some of these compasses point very clearly and are, as described before, better guides than others.
Huxley makes it quite clear in this final paragraph that John’s compass in life was a very conflicted one.
John is unique among the book’s characters in that his life represents a sort of violent communion between the ideals of the World State and the culture of Malpais, and his internal compass’s guidance reflects this.
He is born into the primitive society of a Savage reservation, but is born of a Beta-Minus from the Utopia. Instead of conditioning, he knows of Shakespeare and the Savage religion, but such thoughts are betrayed by his BNW origins—his existence is at once incompatible with both societies. His compass thus feels the pull of two different magnetic norths: one of his Utopian influences and another of his experiences on the Reservation. This makes him ideal to act as a compass of reference for the reader as they share John’s experiences and compare the societies for themselves, but causes John’s own compass to fluctuate and provide a poor reference to use in plotting his own course. Life in Malpais is interrupted by his Utopian influence, and life in the Utopia is interrupted by his Malpais influence.
In the end, he is faced with two choices—a life of “lunacy” like the one back at the reservation, or a life of “insanity” in the brave new world. But he has effectively rejected both in the past, and is guided by his wandering moral compass to a life of seclusion, away from the tug of either society. But even then, in his life of toil and solitude, the compass wanders. The Utopia pulls his mind to thoughts of Lenina and moments of happiness, indulgence and pleasure, while the Malpais culture pulls his mind to his native “Penitente ferocity” and ideas of honor and atonement.
In the end, the Savage succumbs altogether to both forces. He is overwhelmed and consumed by the mocking orgy-porgy that ironically seeks him out, forcing his compass to strongly respond to the pull of the BNW’s society against his decided goal of abstention. As he wakes from that frenzy, the compass recoils towards the Malpais ideals within him, driving him into a frenzy of self-torture and ultimately suicide.
Thus, Huxley manifests and summarizes this idea with the compass simile in his final paragraph. In death, John’s body acts like a wandering compass, slowly turning one way, then turning towards the other—much like his mind and “mental compass” felt the pull of both his Malpais background and his Utopian background in life.
The quest that John’s unstable compass guides him on, then, is not a quest for acceptance in society like other students have suggested above, but is rather a quest to find a society he can accept. John searches for a society that will fit his strange mix of Utopian, Malpais and Shakespearean thought. Like Hari, I feel that the sense of futility Huxley gives with this last passage is striking. Given the two remaining choices of lunacy and insanity after being refused residence on an island, his demise was somewhat inevitable—neither worldly society available to him was one he could tolerate, so he chose the last remaining haven of death.
With this failure to succeed in his quest, John’s lifeless body continues to feel the effects of his compass and eternally turns back… and forth, back… and forth.
“‘And so they died miserably after’—much to the reassurance of the. . . author of the fable.”
First, John's feet move towards civilization, located in the northeast. When his feet pauses near the southwest, it seems like he wants to go back to the way his life was like. Second, John's feet move towards the southwest, where Malpais is. He wants to live in a world uncorrupted and philosophical. In comparison to Malpais' religious torture practices and London's non-religious group orgy practices, the former is definitely more philosophical. John doesn't like how everything in London is about pleasure. He chose to go to the lighthouse to escape it, chosing misery. The southwest savage community certainly has misery - people age, smell, and aren't ridden of happiness.
Bernard and Helmholtz also chose a world with more misery than London. Bernard excepts that he cannot get what he wants in Society. Helmholtz openly likes the idea of suffering to improve his written works.
The compass has always shown people direction, where to go when they get lost. It saved millions of people at sea and has been the sign of hope for anyone that has ever been lost. What Huxley has illustrated is a broken compass, a person who has lost their direction and given up on life. This last paragraph can signify two things: how John is lost between two cultures in which neither would accept him and hopelessness.
In Malpais and in the World State, John has been an outsider in that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot be accepted. Malpais, because of his infidel mother and different skin tone, he is not invited or accepted into any of their activities. But because he grew up in Malpais and had established their culture into his mind, he cannot com to terms with the World State's way of life. Having been lost for so long, he finally was able to find a place where he is accepted. A place that has nobody but himself. Solitude. By oneself, however, John had found more time to think. Think of all of his regrets, and gather his thoughts on life. He tried his hardest to bury the love that he had for Lenina and failed, " 'Oh, the flesh!' The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders that the whip descended, 'Kill it, kill it!' "(230). He had lost the battle of being accepted anywhere, because he couldn't even accept himself. Therefore, he had no where else to turn except in death, "No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream... For in that sleep of death, what dreams?" (227).
The final passage sums it all up in a simile. After John Savage dies, Huxley writes about two compass needles moving around in endless directions. This represented not only John’s morality but mankind’s as well. When John first came out of the reservation he was full of hope and excitement. He wanted to go where people would finally accept him. At the beginning he knew himself and his morals very well. However, as he got to civilization, he realized that people there were stranger and even more un-accepting of him than the Indians. All his life John wanted to be loved and accepted more than anything, however, that is something he never received. The savages treated him as a dirty outsider and the civilized people treated him as a zoo animal. Never was John an equal with everyone else. In civilization, John’s moral compass started to move as he tried to find his own identity. John ended up using soma and human flesh. He did things that he was ashamed and hated himself for it. In his quest, John wanted to purify himself of all things he had done while in civilization. He did not succeed, as he wanted to, because the new world was too much for him. It drove him to his death. He kept changing his beliefs and morals throughout the story, so the compass kept moving in different directions. This simile not only sums of John’s confusion, but also mankind’s. Throughout the ages we have redefined our beliefs and morals with the changing times. What was acceptable then may not be acceptable now and vice versa. Where we will go next, we don’t know. In John represents all of us. Always searching for the truth and trying to find out who we really are.
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