Jon By George Saunders: Summary and Analysis of the Protagonist

Perception and knowledge of the world is gained from the beliefs and experiences of individuals. It is through the culmination of these beliefs and experiences that form identity. To discuss this theme I'll provide a summary of Jon by George Saunders and analyse the protagonist, Jon, who exists in a closed environment that controls his life experiences and limits his knowledge of the outside world, mimicking the way that people’s perceptions of reality are gained through their individual experiences.

Jon by George Saunders: analysis

Jon lives in a facility where all aspects of life are regulated to maximize efficiency and operate tensionless, with the end goal of creating self-satisfied beings. When all experiences are controlled, perception of the world is confined to the microcosm in which one exists. Jon serves as a reflection of our own contemporary society, satirizing our overt consumer culture and revealing the depths of our complicity within our own fabricated facilities. The rigid social structure of Jon’s consumer society is driven by business to emphasize uniformity and efficiency, threatening individualism and true purpose by limiting his experiences to the confines of the Facility. The closed and hyper managed confines of the facility influences Jon to be self-satisfied by controlling his experiences and manipulating his desires. The facility aims to establish a world that functions efficiently in a desired manner, subjecting every aspect of life to effective and rational control. Within the facility, Jon recounts the “techniques taught” in an educational video on the health benefits of masturbation, recognizing that love is a “mystery, ” but the “mechanics” do not need to be. The facility conspires to establish efficiently functioning systems to deliver personal gratification, where even the act of self-pleasure is considered an operation which requires technical training to maximize efficiency. The optimization of masturbation emphasizes the facilities aim in conditioning its inhabitants to derive pleasure from oneself. In a society where individuals are able to obtain satisfaction through themselves, they become comfortable and complacent, thus leaving no room for questioning or self-exploration of their current situation.

Furthermore, the facility’s attempts to control the emotions and behavior of its inhabitants are evident through the partitioning of boys and girls into separate “Gender Areas” to prevent behavior that would detract them from their work as assessors. The treatment of masturbation as an operation and the distinct separation of gender aims to eliminate interaction between different genders in order to suppress human’s natural tendencies of exploration and curiosity, as these qualities are deemed disruptive to the societal order the Facility seeks to maintain. However, Jon reacts to his lustful temptations and as Carolyn gives him a “melting” kiss, it reveals the inability of innate feelings and emotions such as love to be suppressed. Jon’s previous quick relegation of love to a “mystery” reveals his complicit nature as a result of the Facility altering his perception and knowledge beyond what is known from the Facility.

The Facility tightly controls all aspects and experiences of Jon’s life, leading him to accept the rigid social structures imposed upon him as he believes it be normal without an alternative comparison. Furthermore, the Facility utilizes the mood altering drug, “Aurabon”, to simply erase and alleviate any psychological distress that Jon’s previous conditioning fails to resist. Jon describes never feeling so “glad or stress-free”, following the consumption of Aurabon, excelling in his work assessing products. The drug serves to provide a falsified sense of happiness and contentment, diverting Jon from his true feelings. Aurabon grants the Facility the most powerful form of control over Jon through the ability to alter his psyche. The drug keeps him satisfied with the conditions he exists him, leading him to be desireless in his contentment. Jon is able to excel in his assigned function as an assessor, but unable to act and deal with his inner feelings and emotions as he has never truly experiences them with the use of Aurabon, and therefore lacks the knowledge of what these experiences constitute.

The totalizing influences of business within a consumerist society forcefully shapes Jon’s identity by dictating his life experiences, and severely limits aspects of his individualism and ability of self expression. Jon's identity is formed entirely by business as he serves as an assessor to review products and advertisements while evaluating their functionality and effectiveness. The same principles which drive Jon’s society are reflective of our contemporary consumer society. Within a consumerist society, businesses aim to create products reflective of the desires and demands of customers who will return sales and in turn, profits. Rather than the arduous and imprecise practice of soliciting consumer feedback and analyzing data to determine the demands of consumer feedback, the world in which Jon exists re-imagines the same driving principle of consumerism at the next level of efficiency. Jon is seen as the professionalization of consumer feedback, with the same end goal of creating satisfied consumers. The extent of business in shaping Jon’s identity is evident when he references a Honey Grahams advertisement when describing making love as “one person may become the milk and the other like the honey, and soon. . . they just become one fluid, this like honey/milk combo. ”

Jon’s description of the intimate act of sex through the language of a cereal commercial underscores his limited ability of self expression. His abilities to articulate his thoughts and feelings is shaped by the society in which he exists, and his relationship to its constructs. There is no clear boundary between Jon’s inner thoughts and feelings and the outside world he interacts with. As Jon’s entire existence is to serve as a product tester, the entirety of his experiences are lived through the facility and its controlling social order. As a result, Jon’s experiences are limited to the products he tests, and the advertisements he views, rendering him unable to express himself through language any way other than what he has been exposed to through his life in the facility. Furthermore, Jon is hesitant to leave the facility as he believes his communication will be limited to “grunts, ” and that he will lack a comparison of his love to one that he “has a previous knowledge of. ” Jon’s abilities of expression are dependent on the references from his life experiences, from which he draws his language from. If Jon loses these references, he would also be losing his voice and knowledge as a result as he knows nothing beyond the walls of the Facility. Jon’s thought process proves to be ironic in nature as he already speaks in grunts when attempting to express feelings unfamiliar to him such as love. This is due to his lack of exposure to these feelings within the heavily moderated and controlled society of the facility. When the society Jon lives in dictates all his life experiences, the Facility effectively shapes his identity, rather than on Jon’s own accord. Jon does not possess his own individualism as his personal identity and worth is entirely dependent on the Facility.

The Facility provides Jon all that he needs materially, making him desireless and hesitant to leave in pursuit of true purpose. Life in the Facility possesses a paradysical quality in a material sense as Jon keeps all the products he assesses, “every type of food” is provided to him, and the closet is “packed with gratis designerwear. ” However, the seemingly “idyllic” life of Jon is entirely artificial as the confines of the Facility is entirely constructed with no influences from the outside world. Jon lives in a bubble represented by the Facility, where his entire existence is lived through a marketing culture and his knowledge consists of the advertising campaigns he views. The abundance of material goods the Facility provides aims to make Jon complacent and satisfied with his conditions, preventing any disruption that would prevent him from effectively doing his job as action results from dissatisfaction. Jon peers into the outside world for the first time, seeing “only lawns and flowers, and above that a wide black sky with stars, which all of that made him a bit dizzy. ” As Jon has not yet signed his exit papers, he is still very much apart of the Facility, and this experience serves only as na initial glimpse into the outside world, framed to him from inside the confines of the Facility’s walls.

However, society within the Facility has imparted such a lasting influence over him that simply peering outside the Facility causes him to become disoriented, emphasizing the sheer intensity of control the Facility held over him. However, the reality of life outside the Facility exerts an irresistible force upon him, as Jon is not drawn to a particular aspect, but the entirely of the outside world as it exists. The experience of actually walking into the real world was “very power, ” juxtaposing a simply task of walking with forceful emotions, signifying the strength necessary to step outside of the only life Jon has known. The steps Jon takes outside the Facility represents his nonconformity to the rigid social structures of the Facility and his control of his own free will in developing his individualism. The alluring power of the outside world was so irresistible that Jon “could not help” but smell the flowers. Jon’s fascination with the flowers is indicative of his longing of experiencing everything the real world has to offer as the nothing natural intrudes within the Facility. When considering the decision to leave the Facility, Jon draws a “total blank and gets scared, ” yet feels “curious” and “ready to try. ” It is through a brief escape of the controlling nature of the Facility that Jon is able to grasp a sense that life in the real world possesses a weight not found within the confines of the Facility. Jon’s underlying hesitation is a consequence of being apart of a society that is closed and hypermanaged, and the open-endedness and uncertain of reality serves as a startling yet seductive contrast.

Relation to modern society

Jon serves as a reflection of our own contemporary society by revealing the depths of our complacency within a consumer society. Jon satirizes our overt consumer culture in which the life of Jon holds many parallels to our own. As Jon lived within the confines of the facility, unfamiliar with the reality of life outside, we too exist in our own fabricated facilities. We form our own bubbles in which we find comfort, insulating ourselves from anything than may deviate from our own individual perception of the world. As a society, we are more knowledgeable of the antics of popular culture than the events of the real world beyond that portrayed through social media. Just as Jon’s controlled life experiences limited his powers of self-expression, in the age of social media and text messaging, out communication skills equally decline as we “grunt” in our own unique way.

The use of Aurabon and Memory Loops to alter mood and the conscious state strike a frightening parallel to the role pharmaceuticals play in our lives today. We possess our own Aurabons which manifest in the likes of a long list of prescription drugs such as Xanax, Prozac, and Lexapro. As for the love department, finding a partner is nearly becoming indistinguishable from the consumerist mentality of shopping for one with the rise of dating apps, offering the ability to swipe through hundreds of options for the one you desire.

All of these factors are driven by the same principles of the facility with the objective of perfect functionality. It is through the pursuit of this ideal that comes with the sacrifice of individuality and the very aspects that make us human. Our lives are becoming disturbingly similar to the lives of Jon as he existed in the facility, continuously sacrificing the richness of being for falsified feelings of contentment and satisfaction for it is the uncertainty of existence that lends life its meaning.

References

1. Saunders, G. (2017). Jon. The New Yorker, 93(18), 72-81.
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