Analysis: This chapter is partially anticlimactic following the previous chapter where John cries, "I claim them all," thus demanding the right to anything which would make him unhappy. Thus this chapter deals more with the interplay of solitude and society, sensuality and religion. John goes off on his own to recapture everything which the Utopian society has gotten rid of: namely religion, love, remembrance, pain, and abstinence.
The deluge of people who come to watch John beat himself with the whip marks the last chance John has to join the Utopian world. Lenina's arrival spurs him into a rage because in his mind she epitomizes everything evil about her world. She represents a sensual being who manages to come between John and his mother, she defiles his abstinence, and she makes him forget his religion. Thus when John sees Lenina he furiously is inspired to attack her.
The ending is different than the reader would expect. The crowd makes a sadomasochistic transformation from demanding to see pain to demanding sexual gratification. Thus the cry of "Orgy-porgy" is taken up and the people start to dance with each other. The cry is likened by Huxley to the beat of the Indian music. Thus it can be inferred that at some point John is overcome by the crowd and joins in.
Joining the crowd marks John's sacrifice of his last remnants of individualism. He goes from being one man standing alone against a mob of Utopians to becoming a member of that crowd. This sacrifice turns out to be too much for John, and so he is found the next evening hanging from the archway.
Why Mustapha decides to keep John as part of an ongoing experiment is obscure. After all, he is willing to send other misfits within the society like Helmholtz and Bernard to an island. There is therefore no logical reason to make John stay. A possibility is that Mustapha views John as a kindred spirit via the Shakespeare that they have both read. His reason for keeping John is that he wants to...