JOHN THE SAVAGE

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a noble "savage" who's name alludes to religion - shunned by the world state - roamed around.  Later to become the World State's zoo animal, John found himself to be from almost a different planet after being redeemed from the "Reservation" of savages like himself.  In the eyes of his newly-found peers, John the Savage was immoral, and from his point of view, he could not change who he was.

The World State is a perfect society - a utopia, but within all perfection lies imperfection to a foreigner.  John, being the alien, found this "Brave, new world" confusing.  He could not cope with a world where all emotion but happiness had been cast away.  He could not understand the casts to which people were unnaturally born into.  His first physical offense, however, was his refusal to take soma - the happiness drug.  Being characterized as a more "human" being, artificial happiness just wasn't to John's taste, making him immoral for not succumbing to one of the most valued norms of the World State.

His second offense was the revolt.  John attempted to encouraged the lower castes to rebel against Mond's traditions and, in doing so, dumped liters of soma.  By leading this sort of "tea party" in this land far away, John set himself up for his last and final offense to the World State - to commit suicide.  Knowing that John could never be truly happy in the utopia, which is the goal of its people to maintain, John killed himself the moment he participated in an orgy that symbolized his surrender to the World State.  Yet instead of truly surrendering to the artificial happiness that is the world's state, John executed upon the one and only action that expressed his religious depression.  By committing suicide, the savage not only rebelled against the world state's culture, but he also sent the message that he would never will artificial happiness so long as he should live.  Dying for an immoral belief was his greatest offense of all.

In the eyes of the reader, the true immorality lies within the World State's dystopian culture, but in the eyes of the denizens of the World State itself, the immorality lies with John.  Like a fish out of water, John died once he was brought out of the ocean to attempt to breathe the air of man and only to fail - a sad ending to a valiant experiment.