Category: BNW, chapters 1-5

“Can’t you see? Can’t you see?… Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!” (page 7) This is what the Director claims as he takes a group of young students through the hatching and conditioning center. During this tour, the D.H.C explains some of the values that society has embodied in this story. One is conformity through the Bokanovsky’s Process, one single embryo can hatch 96 identical twins, with some exceptions being in the tens of thousands. Embryos are placed in caste systems before they are even “born”, ranging from Alpha to Epsilon, everyone has a place. It is known as Identity, because in this society, ‘you really know where you are.’ You were made to a job that is fitting to your size, in this case, your caste. It’s influence even determines what color you wear as a member of your caste.

When we’re introduced to some of the characters in the story like Lenina, Bernard and Henry, it becomes clear that wearing uniform clothing and performing a specific job doesn’t make everyone a drone. Lenina is conflicted with her feelings about Henry Foster and how that reflects upon the society’s views on relationships that last for a significant amount of time. Here, sex is as casual as taking a walk in a park. They believed that monogamy and marriage were restrictions on which human nature will instinctively break. Lenina feels differently because she has only been with Henry Foster for the past four months. She believes in monogamous relationships, but she buries this passion by conforming to the hypnopaedic saying, “Everyone belong to everyone else”. Bernard is also another character in conflict (man vs society), for he seems more aware of his individuality than most. He doesn’t agree with the societal norm of sex, although he wishes he can get women as easily as his colleague Hemholtz. He doesn’t take the soma that everyone has in their pockets like mints. He is aware of the effects of hypnopaedic training (being a specialist in the field) and even is displeased at hearing other people repeat those sayings. He knows he doesn’t fit in and now wonders where he would, as does Hemholtz. “What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals” (pg 67)

In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley we see a world that is manipulated by Humanity to the point where it loses it’s it meaning. People are no longer born one or four at a time thought natural means instated they are made in batches of 96 via “Bokanovsky’s Process” (17). This process is done in the “Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center” as well as other center thought out the world (20) through an assembly line 220 meters long, 200 meters wide and ten meter high in 3 tiers (22). This is where the next generations of humanity was made, with all the designed flaws and advantages that the world needed. 2136 meters of synthetic human beings that are put through tests, probing, augmentation, determined what they will be before given an opportunity to choose (24-25). Due to these alterations the world is placed into a cast system that is based on the designed human beings. Those who were chosen for the life of higher function live in the cities above the ground and fly above the rest while those who are made to serve have no metal ability other than the bases for understanding orders. The different lobs that are needed to be done where “assigned” here, the cells ae treated in different ways to teach them to love or hate something, such as heat vs cold, upside down in the air vs on the ground, or the intellectuals. Humans have become supply and demand, a set of ratios between sets of types, model types, livestock made for use, conditioned to love what they are and their lives (35). Even at later stages the infants and children are conditioned to love or hate something, such as books and flowers for the deltas (29-31) with the use of electric shocks and loud sounds. This was done before in labs in the USA with children who loved animals and then they were thought how to fear or hate going near them with the use of loud sounds the “Little Albert experiment”. They basically ruined the life of a person by making him fear and avoid animals for all his life thanks to a short period of doing the experiment, for science. It is the same here, teach people to avoid something that could bring them happiness in order to have them do more productive things and be better consumers (32-33).

This society is advanced, they use methods that currently exist but are not used due to cost and moral standing. So is that all that holds progress back? Morals, a sense that nature is better than the artificial, and no need to go forward. In a way you can say that this people made in the assembly line are clones, they are all identical and are made to work together to avoid conflict particularly in the lower caste (18). This would keep everything uniform and flowing at the same speed, all the works are the same they have the same thinking, walking, talking, needs, wants, and physically cannot work faster or better then each other. However the Alphas are different, they too are nearly the same but have more freedom in their minds, they can think, apply, test, experiment and question (18).

This world also has Ford as religious figure and their leaders are called ford as well, they have the letter T as his symbol due to the Ford model T automobile, the first car to be made via assembly line and their years are After Ford (33). They also use Ford as current society says “oh,God,God” and later it is seen that in groups of 12 the alphas take soma and then see ford in a ceremony of sort that is made to bring them together under one thing. For this worlds moto is “Community, Identity, and Stability” and “everyone belongs to everyone else”. They have done away with not only with the standard method of birth but of family as well and monogamy (45-46).

However it seems that at least two individuals in this world seem to fall out of the norm, one is weaker then he should be but he is mind is free, the other also has a better mind but without the draw backs of the first (71). The tow in question are Helmholtz and Bernard Marx. Bernard is an odd person who hates himself and others around him due to what he lack in comparison to himself (41,51,52), he also hated the way they though. How they talked about girls like they were meats to be tested and then told about, and how it was all from the hypnopedia that they received from their time in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center as we saw before with the group of betas. Helmholtz is an odd one because he seems physical able to fit in with others but his mind is to sharp and seeks to do other things with it, we wishes for a greater purpose (72-73)

Overall the society is made for stability, control, order, and no real advancement past this point. They do not seek to make things better, perhaps to make more people in larger batches in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center but we have yet to see any sort of r and d department that makes new things. The people are all designed to love what they do and not ask questions about advancement or different work. The world is split in sections of control with one person in charge of each one (40). They all live and work based on a schedule but some do get free time as Bernard wanted to go to a different place with Lenina so there must be some time available for trips like this one. Overall this is can be seen as a utopia or as a dystopia based on what you value or look at it. On the one hand it is orderly and in control with a few loose ends or a totalitarian regime that the people are forced into from before birth.

To begin, the thing which stood out the most about the first few chapters of Brave New World was the theme of maintaining a stable society, and the practices used to uphold this new way of living.  The story begins with a detail tour of the Conditioning center, which is located a shielded, grey building.  We then learn of the eccentric use of science and how people are made. An example of the method used to create people is located on page 17, which explains the process taken into artificial fertilization. In a lab embryos are raised in incubators, as opposed to the mother’s womb. From there I  predicted this story revolved around a controlled society, where individuality is deemed obsolete.  We then learn after birth each person futures were predetermined based on their predicted potential. For example, the text reads ” We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, As Alpha or Epsilons, as future sewage works or future World Controllers. (page 23)” There the theme of maintaining a stable society, on addition to my theory of a controlled society come to light.

Moving forward,

The tour continues to the Infant Nursery, there we learn about the conditioning used to control destinies and discover the use of uniformity.  Beginning with Uniformity, we learned that each person is give an assign group; starting with Alpha as the elite of all, following is Beta, Gamma, Delta and the shunned upon Epsilon. From there each group is given a color to represent their rank (see pg. 35):

Alpha – Grey

Beta – Red

Gamma – Green

Delta – Khaki

Epsilon – Black

Because of this system, each rank frequently mock one another with the feeling of dominance.

Before rank bantering, the tour continued a set of eight month old  Delta babies are given a series of conditioning test with the use of flowers and books. During these test the Delta babies are tortured as a means of conditioning to their rank of Delta. As mentioned in the text, “They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an instinctive’ hatred of books and botany all their lives. (pg. 30)” Another example of controlling the minds of the society in a conformist society. The idea of these procedures were to create the perfect worker for a perfect society. As cited, “A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower class; to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport. (pg. 31)” As previously mentioned, the notion of this concept is to control the working class, molding them into work-first individuals, maintaining the operations of the perfect society.

Further into my readings, I learn there is actually individualism. Therefore, my assumption of the people not having an identity of their own is questioned. Come chapter 3 we learn this society is more open with sexuality, as well as the old world of thinking is extinct. Prime example, around page 57-59, a rant goes on about the old world way of life including; monuments, religion and war. It can be assumed this new world is more civil and focused on improving their society, rather than being solely focused on supremacy.

Having read a few chapters, it is a near sophomoric task to attempt to unravel Aldous Huxley’s rich novel Brave New World. As characters and settings are fleshed out, preceding events are brought to our attention through exposition. War has made it convenient for history to be forgotten, for important lessons to be replaced by dangerous platitudes. Huxley illustrates how in the wrong hands, words can mold minds, limit meaningful articulation, and stifle individuality.

The first page has the Director introducing us to the Fertilizing Room. As Huxley describes it, a sterile room filled with “scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration.” (15) Here a soliloquy, a monologue expressed by an individual, is turned into an action performed by the room of workers. With one word, we may infer that Huxley is presenting the whole room as one mind. As the tour progresses, the Director enumerates the various means by which humans are conditioned. Bernard Marx remarks on the conditioning of his peers, “Sixty two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!” (53) Repeatedly characters absent mindedly echo the “truths” whispered in their ears, “the hypnopaedic prejudices of (his or) her caste.” (67) In triumph, the Director proclaims to the students the malicious intent of their hypnopaedia, “Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind… But all these suggestions are our suggestions!” (36)

From the hypocrisy of Mustapha Mond, we see that words retain power. He celebrates his predecessors’ triumphs of erasing history, “…Gotama and Jesus? Whisk…” (41) Yet he wittingly quotes the Bible, “Suffer little children.” (62) In few words, he expresses a great deal, and betrays to us knowledge of “old forbidden books.” (41) On the other hand, despite being praised for his mastery of language, Helmholtz Watson struggles to meaningfully express himself. He is seemingly has a knack for coming up with contagious rhymes and platitudes, what he truly desires however is the ability to say something of worth.

I may be grasping at straws here, humor me. It is either an idiosyncrasy, or perhaps an allusion to Shakespeare, the Director pronounces the word “To-morrow” in a peculiar way on page 16. This paired with Huxley’s use of the word soliloquy on the same page, Helmholtz inability to express himself and mention of Shakespeare on pages 41 and 57 remind me of Macbeth’s famous soliloquy. ”Sound and fury” have been taken away from the people, leaving them pacing the “stage” silently, obediently.

— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)