Aldous Huxley created a character in John the Savage that was an extremely complex medley of passion, anger, and guilt. In John's eyes he was doing all that he could to live a normal life that could be considered "good". He found that it was more difficult to come across (and even more difficult to be) good in the World State and ultimately it was detrimental to his health that he decided to strive for a sense of goodness. The World State viewed him as an enemy that must be destroyed or banished, he was seen as evil and immoral to the characters whilst the readers viewed John as a relatable man of high moral standards, this juxtaposition is a unique blend that drove home Huxley's points effectively in
Brave New World.
John the Savage was full of passion, "he loved Lenina" a word that he did not take lightly or threw around casually. He passionately mourned his mother's death while other kids "pointed their chocolate..." and were sorry for the loss of phosphorus. Because of this passion we are able to relate to John more intimately because readers tend to view themselves as passionate rather than passive.
We see the anger in John as he throws soma from the window, but the World State sees him as angry throughout the entire novel, because of this no one ( including Bernard) truly trusts him. We see this "immoral" behavior to be quite ironic because he is fighting drug abuse, a very noble fight in our society. But as readers we need to realize that anything against the World State is immoral therefore John is an angry and immoral person.
John eventually kills himself because of his overwhelming guilt. Huxley magnificently crosses over the immorality of the World State and the immorality of our world in this act. Neither of our universes consider it acceptable to kill oneself, so when John the Savage's feet are hanging, we finally realize that John is actually immoral. Although he was our protagonist throughout the novel, we now see him as the World State did, wrong. We see him whip and kill others just before he turns the affliction on himself and John suddenly becomes immoral to us.
Huxley created John the Savage to make us realize that our own views of immorality are warped and that we should not be so quick to pass judgement on to the World State. In Brave New World Huxley tears down walls that were never even thought about in his time period. When John the Savage was born, judgement had to die.
