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Chapter 6
". . . upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts.". . .
"To touch the fence is instant death," pronounced the Warden solemnly. "There is no escape from a Savage Reservation.". . .
“Those, I repeat, who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there.”. . .
Leaning forward, the Warden tapped the table with his forefinger. "You ask me how many people live in the Reservation. And I reply"—triumphantly—“I reply that we do not know. We can only guess.”
Bernard and Lenina have just arrived at the Reservation, and the Warden is giving them an overview of the situation there. The seriousness of what he says is lost on both of them. Lenina had taken a dose of soma, which has dulled her thinking and emotions. This action shows that she does not want to face any unpleasant circumstances. Bernard’s self-centeredness shows because he is preoccupied with trying to call Watson to have him turn off the Eau de Cologne tap back in his bedroom. He is more concerned with the money he will have to pay for the cologne than in learning about the people on the reservation. The description points out the horrible, prison-like conditions and the neglect, since the Warden doesn’t know how large the population is.
Chapter 7
The channel wound between precipitous banks, and slanting from one wall to the other across the valley ran a streak of green—the river and its fields. On the prow of that stone ship in the centre of the strait, and seemingly a part of it, a shaped and geometrical outcrop of the naked rock, stood the pueblo of Malpais. Block above block, each story smaller than the one below, the tall houses rose like stepped and amputated pyramids into the blue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings, a criss-cross of walls; and on three sides the precipices fell sheer into the plain. A few columns of smoke mounted perpendicularly into the windless air and were lost.
The airplane pilot has just dropped Lenina and Bernard off at the rest-house. As they look up, they see the mesa where the pueblo of Malpais is located. The pueblo is hard to get to because it’s at the top of the tall mesa and is in a harsh environment of rock and scrub brush. Lenina doesn’t like the reservation because everything is primitive when compared to the towering, modern buildings in London. She is much more comfortable in her familiar surroundings. When the helicopter pilot dropped them off, he joked that the savages were tame, so Lenina may also be experiencing some fear of the people she is about to meet. She has already expressed her dislike of the guide.
Their path led them to the foot of the precipice. The sides of the great mesa ship towered over them, three hundred feet to the gunwale. . . .
[Lenina said,] “I hate walking. And you feel so small when you’re on the ground at the bottom of a hill.”
They walked along for some way in the shadow of the mesa, rounded a projection, and there, in a water-worn ravine, was the way up the companion ladder. They climbed. It was a very steep path that zigzagged from side to side of the gully. . . .
They emerged at last from the ravine into the full sunlight. The top of the mesa was a flat deck of stone.
The guide leads Lenina and Bernard from the rest-house to the pueblo. Lenina is unhappy when she discovers that she will have to walk some distance and climb a ladder to get there. Being out in nature, walking, and hearing the drum sounds all make her uneasy and insecure. She is not accustomed to this type of outing or exercise, and she doesn’t like the feeling of having a natural rock formation tower over her. It seems as though she didn’t know what to expect at the Reservation, but what she sees is worse than anything she could have imagined.
She liked even less what awaited her at the entrance to the pueblo, where their guide had left them while he went inside for instructions. The dirt, to start with, the piles of rubbish, the dust, the dogs, the flies. Her face wrinkled up into a grimace of disgust. She held her handkerchief to her nose.
"But how can they live like this?" she broke out in a voice of indignant incredulity. (It wasn't possible.)
The guide has brought Lenina and Bernard to the entrance to the pueblo, and once again, the actual sights she witnesses are worse than she imagined. She is not used to seeing dirt and disorder of any kind. Lenina doesn’t seem to realize that the inhabitants have been forced to live this way because the technologies she is used to in London do not exist on the Reservation.
Chapter 8
The happiest times were when she told him about the Other Place. "And you really can go flying, whenever you like?"
"Whenever you like." And she would tell him about the lovely music that came out of a box, and all the nice games you could play, and the delicious things to eat and drink, . . . and babies in lovely clean bottles—everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no dirt at all—and people never lonely, but living together and being so jolly and happy,
. . . and the happiness being there every day, every day. . . Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World Hatcheries and Awonawilona.
Linda describes the London she remembers to John. She does so in a nostalgic way, showing that she still misses her old life, and thinks it is much better than her current life. Her description of the real, technology-driven material world of London stands in stark contrast as John also learns about the spiritual beliefs of the people on the Reservation. John doesn’t seem to be able to distinguish between the two, and he mixes them up in his dreams and fantasies.
