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Lenina doesn't like the Reservation at all. A foul-smelling Indian guide leads them to a pueblo marred by rubbish, dust, dogs and flies. She is astonished by an old man climbing down a nearby ladder; she's never seen someone so wrinkled or decrepit. His emaciated body horrifies her, and she asks Bernard what's wrong with him. Bernard tells her he's just old; here, people aren't kept physiologically young or preserved from diseases, like they are in Civilization, where everyone is kept at a youthful equilibrium until sixty, when they abruptly reach the end. It's more than Lenina can stand, but she's dismayed to find she's left her soma tablets at the rest house, and will have to face the horrors of the Reservation unaided. Bernard only makes it worse; trying to compensate for the weakness he displayed earlier, he makes outrageous remarks, pointing at a woman with a baby sucking at her breast, and asking Lenina wouldn't she like to have one. They climb a ladder into a narrow, dark room smelling of grease and unwashed clothes, and cross to a wide terrace overlooking the village square. Below, they hear drumbeats coming from subterranean rooms. Lenina rather likes the drumbeats, which remind her of Solidarity Services and Ford's Day celebrations. But then wildly masked people emerge through hatchways into the square and begin dancing round and round to the drumbeats. Shrieking as though they're being killed, they reach a feverish pitch, when suddenly the leader goes to a chest and begins taking out snakes, which he throws from one person to the next. A great yell goes up from the crowd, and they dance again to a different rhythm until, finally, they throw the snakes in the center of the square. An old man emerges from one hatch to throw corn meal on the snakes; a woman emerges from another to sprinkle them with water. Then, amid total silence, a boy of about eighteen, naked except for a white cotton breach-cloth, steps into the crowd, his hands crossed over his chest. As he slowly circles the crowd, a man in a coyote mask lashes him with a whip, but the boy makes no sound. Round and round he goes, being struck repeatedly. The sight of the boy's blood is too much for Lenina; she covers her face with her hands and begs Bernard to stop them. Finally, the boy collapses and the man in the coyote mask brushes a white feather across the boy's bleeding back. He holds up the now crimson feather, letting a few drops fall before he shakes it over the snakes. The drums break out again and there's a great shout; then the dancers pick up the snakes and run off. Three old women come out of a house and carry the boy away. Lenina is sobbing, wishing for her soma, when another young man steps out onto the terrace. He's dressed like an Indian, but his plaited hair is straw-colored, his eyes pale blue. He greets the two in faultless English, asking aren't they civilized, from the Other Place? Bernard is astonished. The boy is equally taken with Lenina, the first girl he's ever seen with cheeks that aren't dark and permanently-waved auburn hair. Lenina thinks he's quite beautiful, and the boy is so overcome he turns away. Bernard peppers him with questions, and the young man tries to explain. Linda, his mother, was a stranger to the Reservation, who had come from the Other Place long ago, before he was born, with a man who was his father. She had gone walking, fallen down a steep place and hurt her head. Some hunters from Malpais found her and brought her to the pueblo. She never saw his father Tomakin again. The boy says he must have flown back to the Other Place without her, a bad, unnatural man. And so he was born in Malpais. Bernard recognizes the story immediately. The Director's first name is Thomas. The boy, whose name is John, takes them to his mother's little house on the outskirts of the pueblo, where Lenina is disgusted to confront a flabby and wrinkled woman who smells like the alcohol they put in the Delta and Epsilon bottles. Linda is ecstatic at their arrival and kisses Lenina all over, crying about how long she's waited to see a civilized face. With Bernard and John talking outside, Linda describes to Lenina the horrors she's been through (all without a gramme of soma to be had), the dirt and disease and all the backwards ideas of the savages. She says it's like living with lunatics; everything they do is mad. For instance, no one is supposed to belong to more than one person, and if you have people in the ordinary way, they think you're wicked and anti-social. And of course, there's no Malthusian Drill, so they have children all the time like dogs. She tells Lenina how ashamed she was to discover she was pregnant, despite following the Malthusian Drill by the numbers. Out here there was no Abortion Centre, so she was forced to give birth. But John has been a great comfort to her, although she worries that the madness around them is infectious; once John tried to kill a man she used to have, and Linda could never make him understand it was what civilized people did. Although she's tried to condition him, it's difficult to answer questions like how a helicopter works or who made the world, when you're a Beta who's always worked in the Fertilizing Room. The Savage Reservation provides a sharp contrast between the modern world of Brave New World and the pre-modern world, which is a reflection of Huxley's contemporary world. In including the Savage Reservation, Huxley is able to introduce a character—John—who is representative of his own contemporary world, and whose differing values will conflict sharply with the State's and create the final crisis. The ceremony of the Savages is a mix of Native American and Christian symbols, reflecting two of the primary religions or mythologies of Huxley's contemporary world. The fevered dancing, drumbeats and the final flagellation around the circle echo the Solidarity Service meeting, while snakes are a traditional symbol of sexuality. The similarities between the two rituals, that of New World and Old, reinforces the idea that humans may, regardless of conditioning, feel a deep, instinctive need to believe in a greater being. However, Lenina is too distracted by the blood to attribute any particular significance to what she's seeing, even if she were capable of doing so. In the New World, people are discouraged from looking for meaning in anything, and so Lenina can only think of the pain—something so unfamiliar in her world that it horrifies her. Linda's story of her life on the Reservation foreshadows the kinds of conflicts her son John will face when he enters the New World. It also shows what happens when someone from the New World is stripped of the devices that make life easy. No longer able to rely on the State, Linda is ill equipped for responsibility. In the New World, knowledge beyond her specific role wasn't necessary, so she has been unable to adequately prepare John for life in either world. Instead, unable to face the reality of her situation, and without soma to help her escape from it, Linda has turned into a drunk, neglecting John most of the time.
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