Summary: Chapter 1
The novel opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The year is a.f. 632 (632 years “after Ford”). The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is giving a group of students a tour of a factory that produces human beings and conditions them for their predestined roles in the World State. He explains to the boys that human beings no longer produce living offspring. Instead, surgically removed ovaries produce ova that are fertilized in artificial receptacles and incubated in specially designed bottles.
The Hatchery destines each fetus for a particular caste in the World State. The five castes are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon undergo the Bokanovsky Process which involves shocking an egg so that it divides to form up to ninety-six identical embryos, which then develop into ninety-six identical human beings. The Alpha and Beta embryos never undergo this dividing process, which can weaken the embryos. The Director explains that the Bokanovsky Process facilitates social stability because the clones it produces are predestined to perform identical tasks at identical machines. The cloning process is one of the tools the World State uses to implement its guiding motto: “Community, Identity, Stability.”
The Director goes on to describe Podsnap’s Technique which speeds up the ripening process of eggs within a single ovary. With this method, hundreds of related individuals can be produced from the ova and sperm of the same man and woman within two years. The average production rate using Podsnap’s Technique is 11,000 brothers and sisters in 150 batches of identical twins. Called over by the director, Mr. Henry Foster, an employee at the plant, tells the attentive students that the record for this particular factory is over 16,000 siblings.
The Director and Henry Foster continue to explain the processes of the plant to the boys. After fertilization, the embryos travel on a conveyor belt in their bottles for 267 days, the gestation time period for a human fetus. On the last day, they are “decanted,” or born. The entire process is designed to mimic the conditions within a human womb, including shaking every few meters to familiarize the fetuses with movement. Seventy percent of the female fetuses are sterilized; they are known as “freemartins.” The fetuses undergo different treatments depending ...
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...Helmholtz is preoccupied with the thought that his writing talent could be better used than simply for writing hypnopaedic phrases. His work leaves him feeling empty and unfulfilled. Bernard becomes nervous, jumping up at one point because he thinks, wrongly, that someone is listening at the door.
Summary: Chapter 5
After a game of Obstacle Golf, Henry and Lenina fly in a helicopter over a crematorium where phosphorous is collected from burning bodies for fertilizer. They drink coffee with soma before heading off to the Westminster Abbey Cabaret. They take another soma dose before they return to Henry’s apartment. Although the repeated doses of soma have made them almost completely oblivious to the world around them, Lenina remembers to use her contraceptives.
Every other Thursday, Bernard has to take part in Solidarity Service at the Fordson Community Singery. The participants sit twelve to a table, alternating men and women. While a rousing hymn plays, the participants pass a cup of strawberry ice cream soma and take a soma tablet with it. They work themselves into a frenzy of exultation and the ceremony ends in a sex orgy that leaves Bernard feeling more isolated than ever.
Both Lenina and Linda use soma to escape from the realities of the world. Soma is a symbol for instant pleasure, and to avoid unpleasant situations. Lenina’s use of soma suggests that she is trying to suppress feelings of embarrassment, depression, and later her infatuation with John. Resembling words that of a drug addict, Lenina says “I wish I had my soma”, so that she could escape from her melancholic problems (Huxley 104). Similarly, after accusing the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, and having him publicly deny her, the emotional toll on Linda was so great, that she felt the need to consume soma to escape. Dr. Shaw “let her have what she wanted”; she “took as much as twe...
This quote explains the social classes and how the genetic engineering is designed. It all starts from and egg and sperm and is bottled in a test tube and goes through a process called Bokanovsky’s Process. This process brings the test tubes through a large metal box and x-rayed for eight minutes. Some die, but the strong ones survive and divide into two and those divide. This creates more and more baby’s to populate the society and none of them have families. The Bokanovsky's process creates the baby’s destiny based on how they are developed. Also the book says “‘...Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par’” (Huxley 14). This is saying that the oxygen shortage slows the development of the embryo. This affects the growth and the lifespan of the human being, and the person has no say or choice of what they can be. Finally, in the book Brave New World “‘The lower the caste,’ said Mr. Foster, ‘the shorter the oxygen.’ The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters” (Huxley 14). This is stating that the lower caste receives the least amount of oxygen. Which
Henry and Leninia are high on soma and despite being so close to one another, could not be further away, as “that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds (Huxley 88).” Bernard also depicts these actions, he can only partake in the Solidarity Service after he swallows soma. Even in the arms of Morgana, Bernard feels increasingly alone and hopeless (Huxley 95). He feels no connections, the soma makes him feel alone, even in the embrace of a woman. With no true connections, the society of Brave New World is doomed to continue the
As the director says in chapter one, "“One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before" (Huxley 6). This certifies that when a society has a lot of technology they tend to take a lot of shortcuts and not do things the original and in some cases the right way.
The book opens on the factory floor of the reproduction plant. What do they make here? Humans. Here in this muti-level factories people are made, not just the bodies but the minds too. In this “Brave New World” Aldous Huxley created babies are decanted not born. The cast system is no longer a frame of mind it is the devilment, mass cloning and use of chemicals to mutate or under develop embryos was used to create classes of people that could be called less human. As you travel up in this factory you see the training that children are put through so they will never question their place in society. Infants made for the lower classes are electrocuted when they move towards books or flowers because “You couldn’t have the lower cast wasting the communities time over books,” (Find and finish quote) Then moving up there are hallways full of dormitories and there peacefully sleeping are children of every age and cast and in the back ground is the soft murmur of a voice repeating every lesson of society. Never be unhappy simply use soma “A gram in better than a dam.” Cast discrimination “I’m so glad I not a gama.” Economic use “More stiches, less riches.”(55) And social behaviors like promiscuity and birth control. The ‘controllers’ of this world made the people that made up the world.
In Leon Kass’ essay “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” he argues against the biotechnological advances, which have lead to cloning human beings. This scientific development has been established in response for those who have lost loved ones and wishes to replace them. In this piece, Kass questions science and the affect it has had on mankind. He believes that though there are many positives that have come from technology, there a limit on the power human beings should possess. Consequently, has man crossed the point to make life, a natural phenomenon into an artificial experiment? The cloning procedure consists of using the nucleus cell of an individual and placing it into the egg of a female. The embryo would therefore consist of the DNA from the
George Santayana once said, “Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination.” In life, there is no such thing as a “complete utopia”, although that is what many people try to achieve. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is an attempt at a utopian society. In this brave new world, mothers and fathers and family are non-existent. Besides being non-existent, when words of that sort are mentioned, ears are covered and faces of disgust are made. In a report to the Controller, Bernard wrote,”…This is partly due, no doubt to the fact that he heard them talked about by the woman Linda, his m-----“(106). Words of the sort cannot even be written. Art, history, and the ability to have emotions are shunned. This utopia is shown as a perfect world in which everyone is happy. If this was true, the people would not need to take soma, an equivalent along the lines of a cross between one of today’s “designer drugs” and Prozac.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." second amendment to the United States Constitution, 1791. Within this famous paragraph lies the right that Americans both cherish and fear, the right to have a gun. Of all the civil rights endowed by Bill of Rights and it’s amendments, none has been as been opposed so hostile and defended so staunchly as the Second Amendment.
The addition of a child into a family’s home is a happy occasion. Unfortunately, some families are unable to have a child due to unforeseen problems, and they must pursue other means than natural pregnancy. Some couples adopt and other couples follow a different path; they utilize in vitro fertilization or surrogate motherhood. The process is complicated, unreliable, but ultimately can give the parents the gift of a child they otherwise could not have had. At the same time, as the process becomes more and more advanced and scientists are able to predict the outcome of the technique, the choice of what child is born is placed in the hands of the parents. Instead of waiting to see if the child had the mother’s eyes, the father’s hair or Grandma’s heart problem, the parents and doctors can select the best eggs and the best sperm to create the perfect child. Many see the rise of in vitro fertilization as the second coming of the Eugenics movement of the 19th and early 20th century. A process that is able to bring joy to so many parents is also seen as deciding who is able to reproduce and what child is worthy of birthing.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World illustrates a colorful, fantastic universe of sex and emotion, programming and fascism that has a powerful draw in a happy handicap. This reality pause button is called “Soma”. “Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.” ( Huxley 54 ).
1.) The Savage Reservation is similar to the Utopia world in several ways. They both have drugs that are designed to calm people down. Soma, used in the Utopia and mescal used in the Reservation. They both also have a separation within their own society. The Utopia has social castes and the reservation has separation between the men and women, the men having more power. The two worlds also both have ceremonies. The Utopia has the orgy porgy ceremony in which everyone gathers around and has an orgy, hence the name. The Savage Reservation has traditional dancing ceremonies like the many traditional Indian tribes have today. The two cultures have many similar ideas, just expressed a little differently.
...ve visited the Reservation, escorted by Alpha – Plus men, and have found a common detest for the site and its unsanitary surroundings. Since both wear the Malthusian Belt, they feel protected from the frowns of pregnancy, yet Linda still faces the downfall. Linda’s cause of committing suicide comes from viewing Lenina as her past and all the advantages of the civilized world she lost due to the birth of John and living in the Savage Reservation. Linda takes an over dose on soma to relieve her pain from never accomplishing the sexual and physical success that other Betas of her time established, while Lenina takes soma for realizing that ending is not always better than mending. Through their common interests, physical appearances, questioning on the civilized world’s teachings and their own moral ethics, Lenina and Linda are shown as character foils for one another.
The first two chapters of this novel consist of the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning showing students how the reproduction system works in the World State. The students are taken to the center where they make the babies using ovaries and reproductive systems removed from humans. They are shown how the government controls all of the reproduction in the country. This shows that the government has complete control because the government even controls the most basic part of life. Children do not have parents and are trained by the government from the time they are born. Immediately this seems alien to the reader because this is obviously not how society works. This seems like a violation of human rights; especially to readers that live in democracies because all human rights are taken away immediately starting at the reproductive state of life.
Some embryos are even deprived of oxygen in order to make the person less intelligent, much like a soggy piece of pizza. Another use of technology in the novel is cloning. Leaders strive to make everyone as similar as possible and cloning is one way of doing this. They achieve this feat by splitting an egg as many times as possible. This group of identical twins is called the Bokanovsky Group.
Ovaries are surgically removed, fertilized and then fetuses are kept incubated in specifically designed bottles. There are five castes which include: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Each caste is destined to have a different role; for example, an Epsilon, the lowest caste, is not capable of doing an Alpha’s job. This is because “the fetuses undergo different treatments depending on their castes”. Oxygen deprivation and alcohol treatment ensure the lower intelligence and smaller size of members of the three lower castes.