The conditioning of Linda is totally different from what
exists on the Reservation. When Linda , who has never been made to do anything
manual, breaks a loom on which she is supposed to weave, the women are angry with her
and push her.
Pope is a man who stays with Linda, and
because she has been conditioned to believe that "everyone belongs to everyone else,"
she engages in sexual acts with this man, drinking mescal, which
numbs her senses like soma, but it gives her a headache the next
day. When Linda sleeps with other men, the women break in and whip her, much to her
incomprehension and amazement. She tells John,
"They say those men are their
men."
Linda
misses "The Other Place" where there were games to play, delicious things to eat and
drink, and lights came on automatically. Everybody is happy; at least, they are not sad
or angry. There is tecnology, babies in bottles, clean, sterile things. In short, the
world that Linda has left is the antithesis of the reservation. Everything is
mechanical and programmed; nothing is spontaneous or natural and based upon
imagination. Linda knows nothing about the world of the earth and sun and stars and
mothers and fathers and children; she is from another world, the New World. As a
product of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, Linda simply cannot
relate to what she has not been conditioned.
No comments:
Post a Comment