Chapter 14 summary brave new world
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CHAPTER SUMMARY AND NOTES
CHAPTER 14
Summary
This is an feeling chapter with John at the bedside of his dying mother. Once again the difference in the old and new nature is clearly depicted. Linda is an anomaly, wrinkled and elderly in every way. All the others in the Senility Ward have aged only in heart and brain; their appearance is much more youthful than that of the ugly and flabby Linda. As the nurse watches the Savage, she cannot know John's totally unorthodox grief and is shocked at his utilize of the word "mother." Neither can she understand his reminiscing about his childhood days with Linda. John is similarly horrified about the children's visit as part of their "death conditioning" as he feels it is a gross intrusion and violently shoos them away.
Linda, in her few conscious moments, thinks that John is Pope, her lover from the Reservation. John is infuriated that he is not recognized, and his grief turns to rage. He grabs his mother and shakes her violently
Brave New World Chapter 14 Summary
More on Brave New World
- The scene opens at the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying. John arrives to see that the hospital is a haven of technology, with scents and televisions running at open tap all the time.
- But he's had enough of that: he wants to see his mother. She's dying.
- Linda is propped up in bed watching some futuristic version of tennis. She has been darting in and out of her soma-induced sleep.
- The nurse hurries off to greet some children (remember that the young'ins are brought to the hospital to get desensitized to death), leaving John alone with his mom.
- Looking at her now, John tries to recall the lively woman she once was by humming the songs she used to sing.
- And then he remembers this world—the civilized world—as Linda used to describe it to him, as a "beautiful, beautiful Other Place […], a paradise of goodness and loveliness." He actually keeps these memories separate from the reality of what he has seen in London. It remains a place "whole and intact, undefiled."
- John, crying, opens his eyes to find the "children" whom the nurse went to greet streaming into the room, one identical eight-year-old male after
Chapter 14 Notes from Brave New World
Brave New World Chapter 14
The Savage (John) is in the sixty-story tower called the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying to visit his mother Linda. The nurse is embarrassed and startled to hear the word "mother." She takes him to see Linda. Linda is watching television, and she hardly even recognizes him, so far gone is she on her soma-holiday. He remembers sentimentally how she sang him lullabies and taught him how to read and told him stories of The Other Place. A large group of Bokanovskivfied twins passes by and he is horrified. He hears them, the low-caste workers, and several children, there at the hospital for their Death Conditioning, talking badly about his mother. John has a violent reaction. He looks at Linda and feels waves of shame for abandoning her. Suddenly, Linda wakes, mistakes The Savage (John) for her lover at The Savage Reservation (AKA Malpais), Popé, finally recognizes him, and, remembering the reality of her situation, dies. The Savage (John) is beside himself with grief and shoves a twin to the floor in his rush to escape the building.
Chapter Fourteen
HE Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story tower of primrose tiles. As the Savage stepped out of his taxicopter a convoy of gaily-coloured aerial hearses rose whirring from the roof and darted away across the Park, westwards, bound for the Slough Crematorium. At the lift gates the presiding porter gave him the information he required, and he dropped down to Ward 81 (a Galloping Senility ward, the porter explained) on the seventeenth floor.
- It was a large room bright with sunshine and yellow paint, and containing twenty beds, all occupied. Linda was dying in company–in company and with all the modern conveniences. The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies. At the foot of every bed, confronting its moribund occupant, was a television box. Television was left on, a running tap, from morning till night. Every quarter of an hour the prevailing perfume of the room was automatically changed. "We try," explained the nurse, who had taken charge of the Savage at the door, "we try to create a thoroughly pleasant atmosphere here–something between a first-class hotel and a feely-palace, if you take my meaning."
- "Where is she?" asked the Savage
Brave New World Chapter 14 Summary
John flies to the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying where his mother, Linda, has been taken. The phone call he received at the end of chapter 13 alerted him to her transfer there. Linda is in a Galloping Senility ward, the function of the ward is give the patients comfort. This is achieved by putting various perfumes in the air, playing pleasant music and letting them watch a television box. The television box at the end of Linda's bed has been tuned to a tennis match. John hurries to see his mother. The ward nurse is completely baffled by this behavior. No one in the World State becomes upset about death, it is not in their conditioning. They are conditioned to see death as a normal circumstance and there is no reason to become upset by it. It is highly unusual for someone to be by a dying person's side, so John's presence it a bit bewildering to the nurse. Then John embarrasses the nurse by using the term mother when he had asks her to take him to his mother, Linda. In order to avoid further embarrassment, she quickly takes him to Linda.
He is allowed to see Linda in her bed, but she is in a state of semi-consciousness. He holds her hand