Upon reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, we are introduced to this utopian world which is described in vast imagery throughout each chapter. In the first chapter Huxley describes the society as well as how babies are made in test tubes. While the Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is giving the tour to the students of the ‘factory’ Huxley gave us vivid imagery to describe the conception and growth process as well as the surroundings. I say vivid since he made you feel as if you were part of the tour, Huxley even used sounds “Whizz and then click! The lift-hatches flew open” (Huxley, 20). The dialogue between characters such as the director and Mr. foster also gave us an understanding of how position was important and there was respect between people and at the same time made it more believable. Various literary techniques were also used such as similes to give a better visualization, “Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling” (Huxley, 22). Repetition was also used to empathize important dialogue or numerical significance.

Towards the middle of chapter one we also learn a lot about the social and political structure in this world, humanity is divided into categories such as Alpha, Beta, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons (from smartest and most advanced down to the ones with less intelligence). In this society it is mentioned that the state and the center have full power and control over the rules and decisions being made such as deciding the future of each newborn and its role in society. Just this action alone gave me the taught that this society valued more the goal as a civilization rather than individuality, this was also emphasized by the Director “We condition the masses to hate the country” (Huxley, 31) so there is not much individually therefore freedom is a little conditioned. In the developmental stages they already start to prepare them physically as well as physiologically for the lives they are to have. Such as a technique they used which consisted of a bowl of flowers and a book and them trying to train the child on what decisions to make. This action reminded me of a psychological experiment conducted by Ivan Pavlov in regards to conditioned reflexes. Another aspect of this utopian society is all of the standardization, starting from all the created babies looking alike to their only being one language being spoken.

So far I have really enjoyed the way in which Huxley uses imagery to make me feel as if I was there and all of the technological advancements which are out of this world yet a little creepy to see the process through which they created the children and manipulated their early lives. I did have to look up a couple of words since I did not know what they meant and I have a couple of questions, but overall I am enjoying the story and looking forward to where it leads.

Judging from the title of the book I assumed the book to take place in a paradise island kind of type, probably because that’s how I imagine a utopia. After reading the first few chapters, I was completely overwhelmed. The ideas in which they enforce in this new world is just absurd to me. The fact that in this new world they create new human beings in a factory instead of natural conception, to me is just inhumane. How did they drift away from how the world once was? All these insane ideas kept me reading and kept me questioning like what was the initial spark of all this happening? One of the major conflicts that I see is probably the fact that before even born, you’re controlled by an outside party. Before they’re born, they are assigned a caste or a role. Not only that but they assign their profession as well. In order to fit that profession, they manipulate their likes and dislikes to benefit their jobs. How is that even living, knowing that you been destined to a role and have had your life fixed to this role. I also found the imagery of the first few chapters very interesting. They clearly describe it as a factory but the writer describes all the different parts of it such as the hatchery, the nursery and the play room with all the kids in it. The writer manages to put a mass producing factory in our heads and gives us a clear image of it. It seems that the staff of the factory are afraid of people teaching these kids of the old ways of life. They are scared that they might rebel and corrupt these kids thinking the way they live now is wrong, which in my opinion is. Mond is a clear example of this as the director is cautious of him trying to corrupt the kids. The book also said that there were rumors of Mond having books that they consider forbidden such as the bible and poetry. I think Mond will have a huge impact later on the book as he might be the key to changing this corrupt society. I think it’s more of a dystopia because all these decisions made to the humans are not of their free will. The factory people are just playing god, assigning roles and everything. Each person should be able to change their destiny and have their own way of living but their way of cloning and manipulation is just inhumane .I also find it kind of ironic that there are still relationships that still go on in the story. Lenina and Henry are a example of this. You would assume that with all this artificial human creation process would wipe out the power known as love. Perhaps Lenina and Henry will see that the way things work in life right now are not right and might do something about it. I’m looking forward to how the story progresses in the next chapters, hopefully someone will question the factories ways.

As I read this book more and more it clinches me further and further.This world that I’m reading about harshly seems like a possible outcome of the human race.The scene is solidly established with the description of this futuristic laboratory and students being toured around to be familiarized on how exactly their birth process works.

The book describes how a organized party ( more of a government ) has taken control of how humans functions and act in society. They have eliminated natural sexual reproduction by the use of scientific technology and machines to produce offspring. The removal of the female ovaries was a little disturbing and made me fell pity and remorse for them because now couples were not able to decide if they could have kids or not.

Not only is the World State ( the government in control ) in control of the population size but who does what in the society separating them into castes ,Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon are the lower caste and are all engineered from fertilization to be good at their given role in society. As scary as this seems I for one might actually approve of this method , it has solved so many social problems and aspects of life. There is no more poverty in a sense that EVERYONE has a place in society , whether you’re a garbage man or a doctor , when you are born you will be given a purpose to live. You no longer have to worry about how your going to survive in our society . There will be no strive for competition against one another and in turn jealousy and hate are erased.

As much as i have read homelessness and crime have vanished. There almost no such thing as violence because of the use of brainwashing , Hypnopaedia as the book refers too , people know what they want and don’t extend their desires or curiosities any further. For example the Delta caste are taught to dislike books and nature since birth so that they do not create a need for change in their life. The doctors use a harmful method by shocking infants when books and flowers are laid out in front of them. They do this repeatedly for about 200 times until the infants were scared of the sight of books and flowers (nature).

As the students progress more into the labs they reach a section of the lab where the young teens are playing around in a garden naked. They do this so that they grow up being sexually comfortable around others.The person who is touring the students around is interrupted by Mustapha Mond , a world controller , and explains to the students of how the world used to be before implementing the use of reproduction machines. He uses the word “father” and “mother” and “pregnancy”.The students giggle and gasp as these words are not suppose to be used. It makes sense since the use of the reproduction machines the citizens no longer have physical parents. The development of the Brave New World and its plot of a “perfect society” has greatly caught my attention. Can not wait to finish it.

In the beginning, chapter 1 of Brave New World Huxley explains what the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is. It was described to be something like a factory. I pictured hundreds of people working with machines all day long. I then learned about the director and that is it people who are being “made” in the “factory”. These people have every aspect of themselves picked out and controlled by others such as their caste, predestination, the colors that they wear and from that, their whole life is determined and it will always stay that way. Once you’re predestined and set in a caste, you’re set for the rest of your life. I feel this is like a puzzle, mixing and matching pieces until something fits and comes together. Something like a person.

After reading Chapter 1,  Brave New World reminded me of The Machine Stops. The “Bokanovsky Process” was something where you could control fertilization and reproduction “one egg, one embryo, one adult . . . a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds”. (pg 17) I thought that the “Bokanovsky Process” was crazy, that one egg could turn into ninety-six! Imagine it was really like that in real life and someone can give birth to ninety-six children? WOW.

I felt this process was similar to how the Machine in The Machine Stops controls every aspect of life. The Bokanovsky process and the Machine in my opinion are similar because they are both controlling life, Bokanovsky Process controls reproduction which makes life and the Machine is those peoples lives from birth to death.

In chapter 3 we are introduced to Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. These are the first two people Huxley introduces, stating their names and information about them. Before Lenina and Bernard, Huxley was referring to the other people but not giving anyone specific names. Huxley describes Bernard Marx as an Alpha plus which is the highest caste a person could be. This sounds like its a good thing me, but then Huxley writes that Bernard spends “most of his time by himself-alone” . . . “why are people so beastly to him? I think he’s rather sweet.” (pg 50) This then led me to think that Bernard is very different from the other people. Huxley then writes that when Bernard was being “put together” there was some sort of a defect/mistake. So I then found out that he is very much different from the others in his caste and society. Fanny describes Bernard as ugly and “so small” and that “smallness was so horribly and typically low-caste” (pg 51). Bernard knows he is different from the others and knows their opinions on him which is why he is making himself an outcast from the Alpha’s. In this society, if you are in a high caste that is good and people look up to you, unlike Bernard which people look down on. This is leading me to think that Bernard is going to be a major part of Brave New World.

I think that the first two chapters of Brave New World were interesting with describing the different rooms and levels but then continuing reading I lost interest. It was hard for me to read the long conversation between Fanny and Lenina (pgs 52-62). I felt that it was boring.

So far, I’m not enjoying this story. Although the descriptions and imagery Huxley gave was good and I was able to picture everything, I had a hard time focusing while reading and I was thinking about The Machine Stops because I think the way of life is very similar for the characters in these stories. I hope this story picks up and gets better.

When I started reading Brave New World, I became interested very soon after. The story started out with descriptive imagery about the facility that the embryos of humans were being fertilized in. The fact that over 70 different people could come from one embryo was amazing to me. The caste system is already determined from this stage and depending on what class you’re in, your place in society is also predetermined. You could be at the bottom, or you could be at the top.

Everyone is taught at a young age to dislike any other caste than their own, through methods that include one called Elementary Class Consciousness, where a voice repeats statements while the person is sleeping. “They’ll have that repeated forty or fifty times before they wake” (21). This shows how hatred for the other classes is essential for this form of society. It is mentioned more than once how this allows for the stability of society, as everyone has to be content with their own caste to allow for them to be happy, no matter how low they are in the system. I see this as a way of controlling everybody, as no one will feel the need to search for something more than they were given because of the training they were given from the moment they were just an embryo.

Consumption seems to be very important for everyone living here as well. As long as a human is consuming a resource given, it is seen as good, while anything that doesn’t include consumption is seen as pointless and wrong. “…to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport…find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes”(17). The love of nature and affection for flowers isn’t encouraged. It is seen as gratuitous and as something that does nothing for society as a whole. Therefore, it was gotten rid of, but not the consumption of transport.

What interested me the most was how different the words ‘father’ and ‘mother’ were seen in their society compared to ours. The word ‘parents’ is met with distaste. Since children aren’t born the same way, the concept of having a mother and a father is foreign and alien to everyone. To be born in their way is called ‘decanted’, so the method of which we are born is something they can never understand.

In chapter 4, the children going through the facility are amazed when they are taught the history of their world. Their history sounds to be what our society is now, and I found it interesting, how the concepts of parents and sexual maturity were seen in a completely different way than how we view them. To them, children participating in sexual acts is nothing, it is even encouraged. When they began to learn the history of how it was discouraged, all of them laughed loudly, as if it was the most ridiculous thing they ever heard. I feel that Brave New World is an interesting book, and I wonder how the characters will be developed further.

As I’m reading “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley I get a lot of imagery with the first few pages that describes a very futuristic world. It was narrated by third person so there wasn’t really a protagonist at this point. The science fiction story takes place in Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre of the future. People are no longer produced naturally by sexual reproduction but instead asexually produced almost as phrase test tube babies. They are produced in a way which they are almost all the same which goes with the theme of dystopian. The whole society within is controlled heavily by government by an caste system in which they are classified by their qualities.Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon are the five categories in which they are in. They are made in a why they each would perform the task the same way. My reactions toward is that as simple they make it seem to have everybody perform the same things it is highly unstable to really put them in a caste system to really make them equals so in a sense I think it is ironic to level them as equals but not really equals. They are useless unless they are performing the task given and mobility to a higher class is utterly impossible. It makes me feel like this society is balanced by fake happiness. Where people are almost probed to feel happy when they don’t really even know how they are really feeling because they are programmed to feel a certain way. They removed basic emotions such as love by taking away even the simplest relationship man can have which is family. They are programmed to think embarrassment. when the idea of parents comes up and everybody is “born” the same ways as twins so they are all already family in a sense but without the feelings of attachment. They use this as a way to form uniformity within the society. They are programmed to not feel emotions in a way because as they think for themselves they feel embarrassed because of societal views and restrictions which is shown within chapter 2 they demonstrate a big societal control on even babies from the moment they are born by electroshock them so they will think a certain way into hating things that would give them feelings and emotions to create though other own as said by the  director “They’ll grow up with what the psychologist used to call an instinctive hatred of books and flowers. reflexes unalterably conditioned. they’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives”(30).  It was the directors way to enforce control from early so when they see books it creates a repellent to get near them so that they would never really create ideas of their own from the future with education they get from reading.

This story is very complex on the relationships people have between each other because they are told from the begin of birth how to feel and think to the point the idea of even thinking for them selves is frowned upon such as education they feel ridiculous.

Brave new world I find somewhat interesting. The concept as a whole I’m not to found of. A society that is decanted and raised and conditioned  by the “state” separated by a caste system. I think the conditioning part, which I think is based on Pavlov’s classical conditioning I find t be the most disturbing. To think the world is controlled by just a few individuals and what every hey think or believe is to be right is that is law, that’s the way it should be!  “Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind……. But al these suggestions are our suggestions!….. The suggestions from the state!” ( Huxley page 36). This I find to be troubling. What I find troubling and also in a way disturbing is the processes of decanting humans and treating humans as machines! The whole process to me, seems so sterile “Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexually mature at four and full grown at six and a half. A scientific triumph. But socially useless. Six year old men and women were too stupid to do even Epsilon work” ( Huxley page 25). They are talking about humans as if they were machines, robots, just a piece of flesh to do work. Besides  My social and moral outrage and disgust about the concept of this story what I find really interesting in the later chapters, is the introduction of the characters, two in particular Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx. I find them intriguing because they appear to have some difficulty accepting the status quo, Bernard more so than Lenina. Bernard is a character I would love to find out more about. He should be one of the happiest people in the world. He’s an Alpha Plus male, which is the highest ranking caste and he is a psychologist. Through some defect ( I don’t know if that is the right word) he is “created” shorter than what an Alpha Plus male should be. Eight centimeters shorter! Which makes him feel like an outcast among is alpha cast, which I believe makes him question the whole process! ” One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Bernard Marx who was a specialist on hypnopaedia. Sixty two thousand four hundred repetitions make on truth. Idiots!” ( Huxley page 52). That paragraphs intrigued me about his character. He is by profession a psychologist and I believe a expert on hypnopaedia, and for him to have a thought like this! It appears to me the author is setting us up for some big event involving him. I’m not quite sure what it is. The obvious thought would be a rebellion against the state, but as I read on and discover more about his character I doubt that would be the case. Another line that struck out to me “What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals” ( Huxley page 71).  For a society as this one, to me, I would think this would be an horrible thought! To be an individual? It’s like having leprosy! This has to be the worst imaginable thing that can happen to a person! I’m curious to know what is going to happen with these characters!

Brave New World Chapters 1-5

            Brave New World exposes the mindset of 20^th century thinking and accurately predicts what could be expected in the future. Huxley does this by making the reader think about the illusions that society believes and the “happiness” that we think we have. He also criticizes the assumption that consumption is good for society. Although the book uses historical references that are not necessarily relevant today, readers of any time period can relate to the feeling that society is a caste system and that the government is trying to have complete control over everyone through indoctrination and manipulative ideas that reinforce conformity.

“Happiness” in this novel is defined as everyone neatly fitting a pre-determined mold that society has chosen for them. Critical thinking, creativity and individuality will lead to social isolation and therefore a lack of happiness.  It was true then and is true now that there are so many advertisements and trends in thinking that are just trying to tell us to be happy. The self-help book genre, which has been very popular over the last decade, is founded on this idea. When people are angry or frustrated with the monotony and lack of freedom in their lives, many times we are simply told to be happy and to think positively. If not, we are scorned and told that we are negative, pessimistic and people will often choose to not associate with that person. Even in the 1930s, Huxley understood this as one of the means of social control.

Huxley was writing this novel at an interesting time in history and he is exposing the corruption and social control of both the East and West. In some parts of these chapters, he is writing a critique of Communist Russia. This is clear when he describes a society that has destroyed the family unit, outlawed religion, assigned all of its citizens to very specific tasks, and punishes those who dissent. He even names his characters Russian names such Marx and Lenina. However, I think he is trying to show that American and English society are doing the same, just with a different economic system. This is evident in society’s worship of Ford. Ford’s factories at this time were creating an assembly line of workers performing monotonous tasks all day long. The efficiency by which the system runs takes the individuality and creativity out of the manufacturing process. This creates a society of drones.

Earlier in America and England, society encouraged frugality and restraint with money and resources. But now that Ford has taken over as the new God, people were being encouraged to buy more and more so that the economy can be supported and everyone can be “happy.” The first five chapters of Brave New World, present an image of the future in which society is tightly controlled and regulated in order to ensure efficiency. Although written for a specific time in history, its messages of social control, erasure of individuality and socially caste systems can be relevant at any time.