When Lenina and Bernard leave for the Reservation in New
Mexico of the former United States, they depart from London and the Charing T Rocket
Station, formerly Charing Crossing, the London railroad station, and take the
Blue Pacific Rocket over New Orleans and then past a tornado in
Texas. Finally, they spend a night in Santa Fe, New Mexico before going the next
morning ona plane which a Reservation guard has landed on the roof of the hotel. Ten
minutes later they cross "the frontier that separated civilization from savagery."
Surrounding the reservation in Malpais is a high-voltage wire that prevents any person
or animal from escape.
Ironically, the name
Malpais is a combination of two Latin words:
mal, which means bad and pais, like
paix, or peace. On this reservation, the Indians do have a peace
from the servitude of the New World, but it is a peace at the price of squalor and
primitive ignorance. And, it is the malcontent, Bernard, who seeks a type of peace from
his world where he has just learned that he is going to be sent to Iceland for his
behavior.
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