Brave New World Reading Assignment 1: Chapters 1-3

The Hatchery uses the Boskonovky process to produce, on average, 96 embryos from one egg. The word hatchery means a place for hatching eggs usually of hens, fish etc. Especially for a large commercial or government site where the young are hatched, cared for, and sold or distributed. This is exactly what the Hatchery in the book is like only instead of eggs of hens or fish it is humans. The Conditioning Center is where the newly produced humans are put through strategic tactics so that they will fulfill their role in the World State as best they can. The lower castes such as Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons cannot think. They are put through things such as hypnopaedia when they sleep and electric shock when they touch pedals from a rose or a book. These practices and others are done from infancy until adulthood. Conditioning is defined as a process of changing behavior by rewarding or punishing subjects each time an action is performed until the subject associates the action with pleasure or distress. This is a perfect definition of what goes on inside these centers so the World State can form each caste to do exactly as they want.

The five categories of people are Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons.

The Director's and Mr. Foster's definitions are very rarely definitions at all. They try to explain something in a scientific way that may be related or may not be. The answers are not very direct and the Director makes it obvious that it is a bother to try and answer these questions. Possibly, because he himself does not know the real answer. This makes the Director's and Mr. Foster's explanations very annoying.

The Boskanovsky process is a major instrument in social stability because the clones are preconditioned to perform identical tasks that keep the World State running just as it should be.

Huxley's presentation of the Director is saterical because the Director often laughs at ideas and morals that are prevelant in today's society.

In this world state the primary functions of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centers is to prepare the people for what they will be doing for the rest of their lives. The Hatchery is to ensure the continuation of the World State.

This society has "all but solved" the problem of the maturation process. There are plenty of other issues that are revealed that are not solved but this is the one the Director points out to his students.

For the future, Huxley sees a world with very little morality. This society is all about doing things the way they are supposed to be done and when life gets a little difficult you can be removed from it all by taking soma. When the soma wears off you don't remember what happened so you just avoided your problem. Another idea that is very obvious is instant gratification. You want something, you get it right away.

To achieve the goals of community,identity, and stability people are giving up themselves. They no longer do what they think is right, to follow the set ways of the World State. Most can't even think or they refuse to think that there may be more than this way of living.

Huxley is mocking religion by referring to Henry Ford as "his fordship", the characters say things like oh my ford, and instead of A.D. Huxley uses A.F. when referring to dates. Also, crosses have the tops removed, so a 'T' shape is formed. This is to represent Henry Ford's Model T car.

Henry Foster is an Alpha, he is the man Lenina was with exclusively for several months. He spoke about their relationship casually which aggrivates Bernard Marx.
Lenina is a young Alpha, she is wanted by many characters but sometimes her thinking becomes unconventional. At one point Lenina questions the accepted behavior of having relationships with several people but is quickly corrected by her friend Fanny. Lenina does not require much convincing and eventually gives in to conformity with the World State's ideas toward relationships.

Hypnopaedia can be used to instill beliefs and emotional attitudes but cannot be used to learn science because after hypnopaedia the subjects don't really know and understand what they were told. They can just repeat what was played while they were sleeping.

The name Mustapha Mond suggests a powerful character since the word 'mond' means world. I think this word relation has alot to do with how Mond is regarded in the World State. He has a very strong position in this society and people look up to him similar to a ruler.

The next paragraph holds the idea that in this modern society history, art and all of the accumulated wisdom of man means nothing. Only the new society and its strict conformist beliefs matter.

The contradiction between what Mond is saying and what Lenina, Henry, Fanny, and Bernard would be that Mond is speaking from his own free will. He is using his actual knowledge while the rest are simply speaking from conditioning and hypnopaedia.

Soma is needed because they need to forget that they were made to think a certain way. They are not supposed to have emotions and knowing something goes hand in hand with feeling something so they need to be taken away, into this empty space. Felling something is wrong but once you take soma it's okay.

I noticed that the shifting of speakers is done very quickly and without any warning. I think this is done because it really doesn't matter who is talking, they are all conditioned, taught, and conformed to say the same things.

The controllers of the new world define happiness with stability.

So much effort is put into conditioning people to be consumers because this ensures the continuation of stability, one part of their motto. Huxley is satirizing his own society in the idea of wanting nothing. The Great Depression affected us as consumers because we went for year without so many things. Now we go without nothing, instant gratification.