The Lifestyle in the Reservation

 

In fact, life in the Reservation is the total contrast to life in Brave New World. The most obvious and biggest difference is that children there are still born and not bred in Bokanovsky Groups. So, there are also marriages and monogamous realationships, motherhodd and raising children, which are totally unimagineable in B.N.W. To keep the savage people and their culture from “infecting” B.N.W with their lifestyle, a huge high- tension fence separates the reservation from the rest of the world. This makes the inhabitants of the reservation prisoner at the day of their birth.

And as they are totally unconscious of what is going on outside their reservation, they live in constant backwardness, without any evolution, because they are simply not given the chance and the opportunities to improve their lifestyle. But, of course, they don’t know any better, because there isn’t any communication with the outside world except some inspectors from B.N.W, and, rarely, visitors like Bernard or the D.H.c, who go to the Reservation like we go to the zoo- to see the wild animals.

So, there are still things like religion (Christianity, totemism and ancestor worship), wild animals like pumas, extinct languages (such as Spanish) and everything that is regarded as either totally barbaric or completely obscene in B.N.W. And, of course, there is no running water, no electricity, no civilisation or infrastructure at all- whereas in B.N.W, there are helicopters, monorails, skyscrapers and other inventions that make the peoples lives more comfortable and society itself more efficient.

In the reservation, the people first have to find something to eat, then they can cook it- on an open fire. They have to fear illnesses, as there is no real medical treatment available, but lots of dirt- the complete opposite to “civilisation is sterilization.” They live in small, dirty pueblos, hardly protected from thunderstorms, which actually can happen very often in Mexico, facing every inconvenience there can be. And the only “entertainment” they have are Indian rituals and festivals with drums and dancers and young men, who have to face the initiation rites. But as barbaric as these festivals might seem, they mean much for the savages, because they are a very important part of their religion- and their religion is a very important part of their lives.

But after these festivals, they don’t enjoy the convenient situation of a Brave New Worldian, who wakes up without a hangover and goes to his work- they do have a hangover, and they can’t simply go to work, because they don’t have any work who provides them with constant pay.

Instead, they have to care for their families, raise their children and find something to eat, which means, in their situation, a constant struggle to survive.