Chapter 13

• Lenina declines an invitation to a feely from Henry
• because he notices how upset she is, he suggests that she might need a Violent Passion Surrogate (V.P.S.)
• when talking to Fanny, she says that she wants to know what it feels like to sleep with a savage
• Fanny reminds her that wanting just one man is not in line with the social conventions of the World State and advises Lenina to find someone else
• yet, Lenina only wants John
• Lenina decides to visit John in order to seduce him and takes soma
• John expresses his adoration and feelings towards Lenina with Shakespeare
• Lenina is surprised and wonders why he had never said anything before
• the speech about marriage and John‘s declaration of his love for Lenina horrify her and she starts taking her clothes off
• John is infuriated by that, he slaps her and calls her a whore
• while Lenina locks herself in the bathroom, John cites a passage about womankind from Shakespeare‘s King Lear
• John leaves after receiving a phone call

Chapter 14

• the reader learns that John heads to the hospital because his mother is dying
• talking to a nurse, he demands to see his mother and the nurse blushes at his use of the term
• sitting next to his mother, John cries and remembers all the good times he had with her
• some young boys interrupt him, asking why Linda is so fat and ugly
• John is no longer able to control himself and slaps one of the boys
• the nurse gets angry with him because John has interfered with the boys‘ death conditioning and leads them away
• in her confusion, Linda thinks that John is Popé
• John gets angry about that, he shakes her and demands that she recognizes him as her son
• then, she says his name and recites a hypnopaedic phrase
• when she chokes, John runs to get a nurse and asks for help
• Linda is dead by the time John and nurse get to her
• John is devastated and cries whereas the nurse worries about the death-conditioning of the children and hands out chocolate eclairs
• when one of the boys asks whether Linda is dead, John pushes him to the floor and rushes out

Chapter 15

• at the hospital, John observes how some Deltas pick up their soma rations after their shift
• in an ironical undertone, John states "How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world."
• John cries out that they should stop taking soma and explains that the drug is a poison enslaving them
• by not taking it any longer, they would choose freedom according to John
• the man who distributes the soma feels threatened and calls Bernard at home; Helmholtz answers the call and tells Bernard about John‘s actions at the hospital and they head to the hospital
• back there, John gets angry with the Delta workers who cannot comprehend him and he throws some soma out of the window
• the Deltas are furious and Helmholtz helps defending John
• Bernard hesitates because he himself is afraid of being hurt by helping John and Helmholtz; at the same time, he knows that they will be killed if he does not help them
• this indecision ashames him
• the police quiets the melee with soma vapor and anesthetics while a recorded voice suggests that the rioters should be happy together
• the Deltas are susceptible to that manipulation - they cry, kiss each other and apologize
• Helmholtz and John are lead away by the police; Bernard attempts to escape, but he is caught

Function

• riot as climax of the novel
  
  • John‘s hatred towards the World State leads him to actively riot against it and the authorities have to intervene
  • certain events precede that riot
  • John struggles with his physical desires and sees Lenina as pure, comparing her with the virtuous women in Shakespeare‘s plays
  • because he is afraid of the physical side of sexuality, he calls Lenina a whore when she tries to seduce him
  • afterwards, he reads Othello, a play in which a black African man falls in love with a white Venetian woman
  • Othello - just as John - constantly sways between viewing his lover as a chaste and as a whore
  • this misperception leads Othello to kill his wife
  • at the hospital, John gets furious about his mother mistaking him for Popé while she is in a soma-haze: one more reason to hate the World State because John thinks that this would not have happened at the Reservation
  • because of his nickname "the Savage", because of visiting Eton and watching a film about savages and because Bernard sells John as attraction at his parties, John draws the conclusion that he is seen as a comedic spectacle and not a human being
  • thus, John believes that he as an individual cannot exist within the World State