John the Savage was never entirely accepted as a member of his reservation’s tribe. He is tolerated by the other Indians, but is never acknowledged as a true part of the group. He is frustrated by this and tries his best to be just like the others, but in the end, he is always left out.
The son of parents from beyond the reservation, he does not share the physical characteristics of the others. Among the black haired Indians, his straw colored locks stand out like a sore thumb. To the Indians, his eyes are also a strange color, a pale blue. And even the color of his skin is different. It is not a dark brown color, but instead a shade of off-white. Even the summer sun’s rays do not tan his skin to the shade of his Indian contemporaries. He dresses as an Indian, but he does not look like one. Instead, he much more resembles the pale outsiders that come to their tribe to gawk at them, and who reel away in fright when confronted by one of them.
Not only is John isolated by his complexion, but also by his own mother. His mother has lead an existence here that his been quite unlike that of any Indian woman before her. Linda came out of nowhere. She at first must have seemed almost like a goddess to the Indians. (the men in particular) She was so much more beautiful than any Indian maiden they had ever seen before. Her hair had been done up perfectly, she had a fantastic figure, and that beautiful body had not one scratch or a scar on it. The men enjoyed her at first. This, you can imagine, made the women none too happy. They hated her for this. But the men didn’t mind at the beginning. She was losing her perfect hair, and the dirt of the reservation was starting to tarnish that wonderful figure. She must have seemed strange to them, complaining in a foreign tongue about the unsavory conditions of their reservation, and sometimes backing away in disgust at their common, everyday habits. And, she was always asking for this thing, this soma. However, the men could overlook this given her other attributes. But, in several months, nature began to take its course. By this time, she was pregnant. She began to put on weight that she would never take off. She did not look like a goddess anymore. By this time, all the women hated her, and now the men could not tolerate her strange behavior. She was not the most popular in the village. And so, when her son was born, many of the villagers already held a grudge against him. His life on the Indian reservation was not off to a good start.
Linda also made a major blunder in the upbringing of her son. She decided to “condition” him to the correct way of life. Of course, her version of the correct way of life was the way she herself had been brought up. She would teach John manners and habits that would set him even farther apart from the other Indian boys. And the mothers of the other Indian boys didn’t help either. They likely told their sons to stay away from John. They knew all about his mother.
When things went wrong, Linda was of no help either. If his clothes ripped, she didn’t know how to mend them. Thus John was forced to be mocked by the other boys for wearing his rags.
John would never be just like the other boys. Despite being born, raised, and having grown up on the reservation, he would be treated as an outsider. He had too many ties with the outside to be a complete Savage, but too many ties to the reservation to be a member of the World State society. John will have no place to go. He was treated as a freak by the Indians, and he will be treated as a freak by the Beta class society. John has no place that he can call his home.