Chapter 14
Summary
At the Hospital for the Dying, John is at Linda’s bedside in the galloping
Senility Ward. He is told that his mother will not recover, and she is deep in a soma trance, and she calls on her Indian lover, Pope.
John shakes her and just before she dies, she recognizes him. Her last
expression is one of terror.
John feels guilty for having brought her back to Utopia, and feels that he
has killed her.
Interpretation
In the Brave New World, people keep their youth by artificial means until
they reach the age of 60 when they age and die, rapidly.
Huxley gives an amusing description of the hospital and the Utopian attitude
to death. Whilst John is visiting, children who are being conditioned watch his mother and disturb John, and their reaction to death is rather callous.
John views the whole situation as completely inhuman.
Perhaps Huxley is expressing a view on euthanasia.
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