Everyone is happy in the World State, conditioned from birth to accept their place, sedated by soma, distracted by feelies and promiscuity. Huxley wrote this as a counter to H.G. Wells's utopias, and the nightmare of pleasure has proved more prophetic than Orwell's nightmare of pain. John the Savage, raised on Shakespeare, cannot adapt. His demand for the right to be unhappy remains the novel's moral center. We read it now and recognize too much: the conditioning, the distraction, the happiness that is not happiness. The Savage chooses pain. We may not have the choice.