Brave New World Pages 15 - 62 with Preface

Summary- Brave New World opens into a tour of students through the Central London Hatchery And Conditioning Centre. In Brave New World the world is one whole state named the World State. It is a world without wars or quarrel. All of this is possible through the advancements of biology and physiology. This advancement has accumulated into this Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. In the year of A.F. 632, the social system is divided into different castes. You were put into a caste since birth, and you could never escape your social destiny. As the students progress through the building they take detailed notes on the process of hatching humans. They start off as ovaries and then fertilized in the lab through incubators. Then the ripened eggs are to undergo the Bokanovsky process. The different caste have different fertilization times. The Gammas, Deltas, and the Epsilons are brought out of the incubators after 36 hours. The Betas and Alphas are returned into the incubators for further development. The Bokanovsky process is changing the egg to divide into 96 identical human beings from the single egg. This creates a society where everyone is alike, created from the same DNA and mass produced. The caste have different purposes. The Epsilons are to be future sewage workers, .The humans are being created through a factory, and no longer born through parents. This is evident in the quizzical looks the students were giving the tour guide when he talked about parents and families. They look to those things with uttermost disgust because society blames them for all of the arguments and problems of society. They predestine people through their creation. The lower caste are given less oxygen which directly affects their intelligence. This also decreases their creation time allowing them to be mass produced at much faster rates than Alphas. The caste are also distinguished through their clothing. The alphas wear grey, the deltas wear khaki, and the gammas wear green. The humans are brainwashed since "birth" through the process of linking objects to feelings. Then little babies are drawn in by the colors of the books and flowers. Once the first baby touches them there are loud noises for books and electrical shocks for flowers. This creates a hatred and fear of these two items for the rest of their lives. This keeps them from straying from their jobs and learning because the babies were part of the delta class. Hypnopaedia, sleep teaching, is used to teach the older children. When they sleep, a recording is played over and over again affecting their ideas about society. They are slowly being brainwashed into their social caste through phrases that make them like their own caste. The scientists say that by making the humans like their social caste, society is happier. The tour group later meets with a ford, one of the ten controllers of the world. We are then introduced to Lenina, a misfit because she has been dating the same man for over 4 months. The controller mentions history and how it corrupts a person and rattles off events of the past, our present day world.

Quote- "Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas. uniform Epsilons. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology"(Huxley 19).

Reaction- The book takes a new look at the possible future of mankind. Instead of the fancy technological advancements of other futuristic novels, Aldous Huxley takes a different approach. He stresses the advancements of psychology and biology into creating a new type of world. There are no flying cars or fancy floating buildings, but there is an even greater impact. The society has changed. Caste divide of people into their preset destinies. Everybody is almost identical and society is one. Instead of mass producing technology, the scientist are mass producing humans. They are becoming machines in their own right and the different caste serve different purposes. This book is really thought provoking. I have never viewed the future in this way, and I think it is rather frightening. I give thanks to Daniel who recommended this book to me because I was having trouble finding a ROAR book. The quote stated above is really powerful. Mass production has always been applied to technology and nonliving products. This was a whole new look at factories. These factories produce biological products, the everyday humans of society. The quote explains that the mass production of different caste of almost identical people solve all the arguments in the world.