The first couple of pages of Brave New World and Brave New World Revisted written by Aldous Huxley caught my attention almost immediately. The title itself was confusing when trying to connect the ideas with utopias and dystopias, but as I kept reading, I merged and concluded the topics instantly.

Right away, I was astonished as to why the students visiting the facility worshiped the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning to the point where his words were considered “gold”; the students took notes on absolutely everything he stated. I thought about the possible respect they had for the Director, however, what could he possibly have done or invented to be praised upon all? I was in utter shock to realize his work and his intensions to possibly create his own world.

The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is in charge of his own operation, in my opinion, like a laboratory to multiply and/or create human beings, specifically groups of twins by simply using one embryo. I thought about his concept and I concluded that he possibly wanted to have this method of creating human beings to populate “his world” and since they will be participants in his mind, they all shall be operated through him. The comparison I had in mind was forcing human beings to be a part of his creation, ruled by his own regulations without an opinion to be stated; kind of like slavery–to an extent.

But what was most shocking is the Director’s plan of conditioning upon the babies created by Bokanovsky’s Process, is that they intend to control the product of the embryos and have full control on how their lives will be. The author states, “No wonder these poor pre-modern were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy” (47 Huxley). This statement emphasized on the idea the Director had in mind, control. But why control the possible citizens in his possession? Why create duplicates using only one single embryo? What is its purpose?

While reading the first five chapters of the novel and connecting it to the english course I am currently enrolled in (topics of Utopia and Dystopia) I have convinced myself that the Director has envisioned his utopian world consisting of the perfect, full-control, over-populated citizens to be a member in his world. With the constant analysis, test tubes, examinations and so on, it is clear that the Director is focused on the idea of perfection and controlling every aspect of it as possible. I may be wrong, but why else would someone be this mad? To carefully and constantly make examinations in creating the perfect specimen and using operant conditioning to control them?

I believe the idea of operant conditioning is very powerful. I once studied this in my psychology class, although it was several months ago, I remember it vaguely. I remember there is a positive and negative conditioning, and although I don’t remember it perfectly, I remember the impact it had on the patient/target and how it controls their mind. The connection here is, by the Director of  Hatcheries and Conditioning, using conditioning to control the products of one single embryo, he may well be closer to creating his “perfect” world consisting of “perfect” citizens.

I may be wrong in theory but I strongly stand by it. As I read on the next chapters, it can make or break my conclusion. We shall wait and see.

After reading the first few chapters of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley , Im still every unclear of the plot of the story. I like how the author has his ideal idea of utopian society of the future, how he divides people not by class but by the caste system. In which he people are categorize by either Alpha Beta Gamma Delta and Epsilon. People in this utopian society don’t get to choose what category they fall in, there given to them by birth in which i i disapprove from. I believe people should grow up to be who ever they want to be, no one should be force to do something or be on someone they don’t want to. In Chapter one , the author explains how each fetus is treated differently depending on which castes state they fall in to. For gamma , deltas and epsilon eggs are shocked so that they are weaken and become less society stable. The Author also explains to use that a person position in the caste system is usually recognize by the type of clothes they wear. For example deltas would wear khaki colored clothes. In Chapter 2 what I found pretty instering was the way they made babies dislike books and flowers. Reading it at first i didn’t understand why someone would do that but as i kept reading it made sense. By creating fear into an object a child would want , it would make them not want it any more. and in the infant nurseries room thats what they did they created fear in the babies by shocking them with loud noises such as alarms sounds while they crawled to the books and flowers. The Author explains that by doing this the babies develop a hatred toward the objects. in which makes them not want them anymore. I find this strategy pretty smart but cruel as well. We are also introduce to two Alpha males Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson. Also to Lenina    a worker in the conditioning centre. Also Henry Foster i really don’t know his position in the centre but he seem to explain the center to the group of kids . I notice while reading that there was a love triangle between Henry Foster and Bernard toward Lenina. Although i believe love is forbidden in this society because no man belongs to no women. One word i got suck on while reading was the word hypnopaedia , while later on i found out it meant learning by hearing while asleep. i was so lost when the Director was telling the story of the little boy who learned while hearing the radio his parents had left on. On page 36 the Director describes Hypnopaedia as ” The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time” in which really caught my attention. I didn’t even know people could learn while they were asleep. Is this gonna affect the Society since the hole point of stopping delta babies from reading and writing is to that they remain in that caste system? I was getting confused after that. Also the drug soma was introduce although I’m still every unclear what it is, i believe it helps people go to sleep for a long period of time. This book is little hard to understand for the fact that is seems to change from story to story. I look forward to reading more of it .. -Arturo

Brave New World is a book that I’m happy to read and I just could not put the book down with the limited amount of chapters I read thus far. Instantly, I was able to identify the characters and just how cruel, yet subtly brilliant the story is. I won’t go too in-depth with a summary but from the chapters I read, a group of young students (assuming aspiring scientists) go on a tour in a building called Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Building. It’s where groups of scientists experiment with fertilization of humans and embryos. The story I was instantly able to connect this with was E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” because it’s two similar passages of science gone wrong. Comparing both story and passage, it takes a very intelligent, boundary breaking, amazing concept, and turns it for the worst.

Mr. Foster and the director of the “tour” take the students around the building and show them their experiments with the embryos and the fertilization, and during this I experienced some horrible, yet amazing discoveries as the story went deeper and deeper as their tour went on. One of the parts I couldn’t believe was when the scientists experimenting with the fertilized babies in chapter 2. They tested these innocent babies just for the sake of science. Something I would always think about is scientists doing experiments and test on animals and critters. But reading on I already knew something bad was going down behind all of this. I connected the text with utopia and that’s exactly what the Director and Mr. Foster want to do. They want to create the “perfect” humans.

“We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future…” He was going to say “future World controllers” but correcting himself, said “future Directors of Hatcheries” instead”. (Huxley 23)

I didn’t know how I felt about humans being tested on this way, and not just humans, but embryos and fertilization being tested on just to create a separate specimen of human beings. It was crazy to put in perspective that somewhere out there scientists are actually doing this in real life, and it’s scary to think about what they might create in the future or worse what they may not create. The story takes place in A.F. 632 which takes place in the future beyond today’s civilization. The scientists seem to want to weed out the past crop of human civilization and create a new, “perfect” line of humans but what’s stopping them is the delays in getting their formulas right. I’m hoping they never get anything right just for the sake of creating something they’d wish they never would’ve created because this experiment can always turn their backs on the scientists. I thinking creating something way too experimentally controlled can always have it’s cons and I’m interested to keep reading what will be made of all of this. The perfect child of blonde hair and blue eyes can’t be made chemically, just like life, it’s made organically.

Reading this story, it kind of reminded me of one of the previous stories that we read, The Machine Stops. In the novel Brave New World starts off describing a factory which I believe may be one of the main settings of the story. The setting is located in London at Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The story takes place at some weird time in the future. In this factory human beings are being produce by asexual production instead of sexual production (as already mentioned by Kali). In the factory the babies are being created in test tubes, with preselected destinies already planned out for them. In said factory, the babies are also being placed in a caste system that consists of Gamma, Beta, Delta, Alpha, and Epsilon. It’s obvious that this story is dystopian, by the fact that everyone has preselected destinies and placed into a caste system.

At the beginning of the story, there’s a group of students that are being given a tour of the factory by the director. The students are given the run down about how the process works with creating the test tube babies. The author Aldous Huxley uses plenty of imagery to make the reader get the feel of the setting. It makes you feel like as if you are really there experiencing it.

In chapter two, the thing that stood out to me the most was the experiment that the nurses did with the babies. The nurse presents flowers and books to a group of babies. The babies are allowed to play and get familiar with the items. Then the nurse sets of an alarm and an electric shock to the babies. At this point the babies are screaming with terror. Afterwards the nurse tries to present the items to the babies again, but they refuse. Now in the babies mind, they believe that the flowers and books set off the alarm and the electric shock. So now they don’t want to play with it anymore. This reminded me of something I learned in one of my psychology classes. This is called Pavlov Classical Condition (also mentioned by Denise). They did this to get them to like and dislike certain things.

In this timeframe peoples thoughts and actions were controlled by a higher authority. Who they would become what they did, what they would like and dislike was not in their hands to control.

In the novel, the author uses repetition a lot. One of the phrases that he emphasizing is “every one belongs to every one else.” This quote means to me that everyone shares significant others. Well technically, they cant really be significant if they aren’t yours to have.

This story isn’t really the most interesting so far, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and read more.

I believe that A Brave New World is about a dystopia. In which values are not the ones that you would probably think if us having today. They’re emphasized values are the ones that were assigned to them based on the class they belong too. Which ranges from Alpha-Delta. Everyone is taught their specific values and rules through Elementary Class Consciousness. The D.H.C. Says “They’ll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake” (Huxley Pg.35). They are being taught through repition in their sleep and when the lesson is done this will go with them forever. I see happiness in this society being determined by the values you are taught as well. They are teaching them to think that whatever class they belong too is the best and that being in any other class would be worse. This is also taught through Eementary Class Consciousness.

Science and technology are advanced in A Brave New World. “The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg” (Huxley pg. 18). A single egg could produce 96 identical twins. These 96 twins coming from the same ovary and the same male. Which is truly beyond normal. They also use lifts and planes as well as helicopters to fly to places, there has been nothing about cars. In the text it is also mentioned that they use the drug soma. ” There is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two Grammies for a trip to the gorgeous East” (Huxley pg.62). They would take soma which would create some kind of happiness and escape from the world. My question is why would they need an escape from their world and are they unhappy? If so, why? When you think about drugs you think about people wanting to get away from the world they are living in and being unhappy with the life they live.

Another thing that caught my eye was the way they refer to women in the text. Henry Foster says “Oh, she’s a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I’m surprised you haven’t had her” ( Huxley pg.49). It seems as women are seen to be sexually promiscuous. As if they’re just seen to be with any man that asks them. He also refers to her body figure like its the only thing she has to offer. In chapter 4 it also says ” She was a popular girl and at, one time or another, had spent a night with almost all of them” (Huxley pg.63). This would be something that in today’s day is most likely frowned upon when a woman sleeps around. In the book it seems to be something good and something which makes you popular which is also a good thing.

From pages 82-86 in the book I was completely lost and maybe I didn’t think it through thoroughly but I definitely didn’t know what was going on. I know they all took soma and it was something like a party and they were referring to someone coming but I had no idea what was going on. Another thing I noticed was that the women were required to take contraceptives. They were taught this from the ages of 12-17. ” Years of intensive hypnopaedia and, from twelve to seventeen” (Huxley pg.80). Even though Lenina was as drugged as she was she still remembered to take them because as stated in the text “It was almost as blinking”(Huxley pg 80).

The novel “Brave New World”  by Christopher Higgens is a very gripping novel about a futuristic society that is quite different from our own.  The book describes this society in which the central government has complete control over the population through various means. To start they control the actual population number by “manufacturing” people in factories in a sense. The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning seems to oversee this process. They have dubbed this process “the   Bokanovsky process” . In the first few chapters of the novel,  he is giving a group of students a tour of the factory. He explains how they take a single embryo and turn it into 96 exact copies. They get developed over this long track that runs around the factory. Every 24 meters, a nurse then injects some type of hormone into the container,  depending on what type of worker they r making. They travel around this track for quite some time. It takes 2040 meters to complete. believe this to be a method of some sort of quality control for the factories that these people will work in. The quality of the product will be the exact same because the same person is creating it more or less.  Not only are the people physically the same, but they are mentally the same. They achieve this through brainwashing them while they sleep.   The factory pretty much sets the social destiny of the type of person they are conditioning. They are forced to accept what they are given and enjoy it.  The population is split between some type of social classes named Alpha,  Beta,  Delta,  Gamma and Epsilon. As the book progresses,  i get the feeling that some of the classes look down on others.  For example they constantly make fun of the deltas for wearing khaki pants.  Seems to be that the delta,  gamma and Epsilons are the lower members of society.

Even with all of this conditioning and social belonging,  there doesn’t seem to be any likes of the social problems we see in todays world such as poverty, crime, and homelessness.  Because everyone is happy with who they are and how they are there isnt any type of issues like i stated before.  Other things that are a lot different is the views of sex and relationships in that matter.  In the novel, it is normal to have multiple sexual partners and its actually abnormal if you are with the same person for longer than a few months. The society also frowns upon people getting pregnant. They also seem to practice sex at a very young age,  as young as preteens it seems.  In today’s society, people usually become sexually active in high school. It almost seems to be the opposite of our society today as far as their moral values are concerned.

Another thing that they seem to have abolished in the novel is the types of religion that we have today such and Catholic, Christian, Judaism, hindu,  ect.  Instead they seem to worship Henry Ford as a type of God. I guess this is because Ford invented the assembly line which is very common to them. Like today Catholics say Bc and Ac for before christ anf after christ. In the book they say  af instead for After Ford. Another way that they hint that Ford is viewed as a God is how they talk. Instead of saying “Oh God”  like we do today, they say “Oh Ford”.

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.