This chapter is about how much John, (the Savage), believes in God. He thinks Utopia has payed a high price for eliminating art and science. John thinks the society should turn to the Lord, (not Ford), when they are alone, need someone to manage, punish or reward them. He feels that it is only right for others to feel, hurt and to be afraid. The controller knows that passion is the definition of humanity. The people all take the violent-passion surrogate, which fills their bodies with the same hormone that would flow through them if they felt sincere fear and rage. John wants to feel these emotions on his own, and therefore, rejects the idea. Mond doesn't understand why John or anyone else would want to make that choice.
Vocabulary...
- avow
- (v.) to declare openly, blunty and with out shame
- irksomeness
- (adj.) tending to boredom
- inevitably
- (adv.) in an expected way
- pneumatic
- (adj.) more or worked by air pressure
- neurasthenia
- (n.) an emotionaland psychic disorder that is characterized especially by easy fatigability & often lack of motivation, feeling etc.
- listlessness
- (adj.) characterized by lack of interest, energy or spirit.
Direct Quotes
"A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves" (p.237).
--His Fordship, Mustapha Mond
"It is natural to believe in God when your alone-quite alone in the night, thinking about death." (p.242).
--John
"But people never are alone now, we make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it." (p.242).
--Mustapha Mond
"But God's reason for everything is noble and fine and heroic. If you had a God." (p.243).
--John
"My dear young friend, civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism." (p.243).
--Mustapha Mond
"I claim the right to be unhappy."(John)
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent." (p.246).
--John & Mond
"But I dont want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
--John
"'You can only be independent of god while you've got youth and prosperiy; independence won't take you safely to the end'" (239)
--Mond
"'People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.'" (241)
--Mond
"'You can carry your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what Soma is.'" (244)
--John