Brave New World Book Notes

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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Author/Context

Aldous Huxley was an essayist and novelist whose reputation reached its peak in the 1920's. He excelled in not only his essays and novels, but also in many other genres including poetry, journalism, historical studies, travel works, screenplays, and short stories. Brave New World (1932) is probably his most well-known novel, though he did publish many other novels of intellectual and critical success such as Antic Hay (1923), Point Counter Point (1928), and Eyeless in Gaza (1936).

Huxley was born to a family of strong intellectual background in Laleham, England, on July 26, 1894. He was sent to preparatory schools for high-class children, and eventually made his way to the very reputable private school, Eton at age thirteen. His father, Leonard Huxley, taught and later worked and wrote for a publishing firm, and his mother, Julia Frances Arnold Huxley, founded a girls' school. His aunt, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, was a novelist, and his great-grandfather, Dr. Thomas Arnold, was an educational reformer. Perhaps his best-known relative is his great-uncle Matthew Arnold, who wrote the famous poem, "Dover Beach."

Huxley was the third of four children. His siblings were also noted for their intelligence, and his brother Julian became a highly regarded biologist. Yet this gifted household suffered a number of tragedies which would later shape Aldous' life and work. His mother Julia died of cancer in 1908 when Aldous was just fourteen years old. At age sixteen, Aldous contracted an eye disease called keratitis punctata, which left him nearly blind for eighteen months, ending his budding scientific or medical career. Aldous' early exposure to physical suffering, both his own and that of close family members, is apparent in his novels, in which he often explores the theme of conflict between human spirit and human flesh.

In 1914, Huxley's brother Trevenen hung himself. In writing of his brother's suicide, Aldous concludes it was his ideals that had driven him to take his own life. The catastrophic conflict between ideals and reality becomes another theme dominating Huxley's work.

While in college, he met his first wife, Maria, in 1919. They had a son, Matthew, and the same year, Huxley published his first book of short stories. Maria died in 1955, and in 1956 he married Laura Archera Huxley, also a writer.

Point Counter Point (1928) is one of his most complex novels, and it is the novel that established him as a best-selling author. Brave New World was to follow. Huxley began Brave New World as a result of his intrigue with the sciences, which he had studied extensively before the damage to his eyesight at age sixteen. He was concerned with the social and moral ramifications of advances in science, medicine, and technology. Huxley felt that those in power, controlling the use of these advances, particularly, officials in the government, were not adequately responsible. Although the novel can be read purely as science fiction, there is a deeper commentary reflecting Huxley's concern with technology and its place in society. The commentary on the potentially diverging paths of social and scientific progress continued into his later novels and essays.

Ultimately, Brave New World may have set Huxley on a pedestal. Critics have attacked Huxley's later works of fiction for a lack of positive characters, noting that the author is more effective at expressing discontent than approval. Other critics and scholars have defended his later works, claiming that the ideology and morality present in his novels place it outside of the field of fiction, and therefore it should not be scrutinized as such. Although he is not critically recognized as a literary great, Huxley remains well respected for the impact of his work, and for its incredible versatility in both style and form.

Bibliography

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Collins Perrenial Classics, 1998.

Paulsell, Sally A. "Aldous Huxley." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 162. John H. Rogers, ed. Detroit, London, and Washington, DC: Gale Research, 1996

Thody, Philip Malcolm Waller, 1928- Aldous Huxley: a biographical introduction [by] Philip Thody. London: Studio Vista, 1973.

Trosky, Susan, ed. Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series, Vol. 44. Detroit, London, and Washington, DC: Gale Research,1994

Plot Summary

The novel opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, in the years A.F., or After Ford. Ford is the God-surrogate that many citizens of the World State believe is also Freud, the controversial psychosexual psychologist. The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is leading a tour group of young students around a lab. He explains the scientific process by which human beings are fertilized and custom-made, and shows them the Social Predestination room, where workers create the social castes. They pass onto the conditioning rooms, where they reinforce the caste divisions by sleep-teaching.

There are some short interludes between Mustapha Mond, Resident Controller of Europe, and the students; Lenina and her friend Fanny; and Bernard Marx and Henry Foster.

Lenina confirms with Bernard that she would like to go on a trip with him to The Savage Reservation. Following her departure, there is more bitterness on the part of Bernard concerning his own inferiority.

Lenina and Henry eat dinner, go on a soma-holiday, and see a concert of synthetic music. Later, they have sex. The next day is Bernard Marx's Solidarity Service Day. A group of men and women sing and take soma together, and it eventually turns into an "orgy-porgy".

Lenina and Bernard go on a date. He tries to show her the ocean, and to express some of his subversive views to her, but she cries. She convinces him to take soma, and they go back to his rooms and have sex. The next day, when Lenina asks him if he had fun, Bernard is pained at the way she seems to degrade herself.

He and Lenina go to The Savage Reservation. Lenina shudders at the unclean conditions. They meet John, The Savage. He tells his story to Bernard, and it turns out that he is the illegitimate son of the Director and Linda, a woman who disappeared twenty-five years ago. John tells Bernard his life story. He feels desperately unhappy and alone. Bernard identifies with John and invites him to return to London with them.

Bernard triumphantly presents Linda and John, the Director's lost woman and illegitimate son. The Director is laughed out of office. Bernard is the big man on campus.

Lenina is interested in The Savage, and so she takes him out, and much to her chagrin, they do not have sex.

The Savage refuses to appear at an assembly. This shatters Bernard's reputation. Lenina is absent-minded, thinking about the Savage. He tells her he loves her and she undresses. Disgusted by the sexual degradation of the society, he violently rejects her.

The Savage is in the Hospital for the Dying to visit his mother. He hears the low-caste workers and several children talking badly about her and has a violent reaction. Suddenly, Linda wakes, recognizes him, and dies. He attempts to destroy a large supply of soma, causing a riot, and the police take him away, along with Bernard and Helmholtz.

The three meet with Mustapha Mond. Mustapha Mond and the Savage speak of religion. Mond says that there is a choice between machinery, scientific medicine, and universal happiness-- or God.

The Savage flees, planning to become independent. He repents by whipping himself. One day a photographer makes a popular film about The Savage. The Savage becomes a celebrity. There is a huge riot which turns into an orgy. The next morning, reporters find that the Savage has hung himself.

Major Characters

The Director (Tomakin): The Director is the first character we meet. He is leading a tour in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. It turns out that he impregnated a woman who was then lost to the Savage Reservation. When Bernard and Lenina travel to the Reservation, they find the woman, Linda, and her son, John (the Savage), and as the director is reprimanding Bernard, Bernard arranges for the appearance of John and Linda. The Director, humiliated by his illegitimate wife and son, leaves, and this is basically the last we hear of him.

Lenina Crowne: Lenina is the main female character. She is nineteen years old. She is typical of the new civilized person, both intellectually and sexually. She is the female archetype and also the ideal: very attractive, popular, and 'pneumatic.' She is first seen as a lab worker, and the companion of Henry Foster. Unlike most of the main characters, she is of the Beta, or secondary, caste in the social hierarchy (others are Alpha). Bernard is extremely interested in her, and luckily for him, she is also interested; eventually they go out on a date and following the date, they have sex. She goes with him to The Savage Reservation, where she meets John, who soon after, is referred to as the Savage. She becomes interested in John, but he rejects her; she is typical of a civilization he does not understand. This makes her sad and frustrated. Eventually, she shows up at his refuge, and he beats her with his whip.

Bernard Marx: Bernard Marx is one of the most important male characters. He works for the Psychology Department of the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre. He is of the top social caste, an Alpha Plus Intellectual. He is the only upper-caste member in the book besides Helmholtz Watson who voices disapproval and bitterness toward society. He is extremely disgruntled. He has a crushing sense of inferiority due to his physical condition. Although he is an Alpha, he is shorter and thinner than the typical male of his social status, and some say he was incorrectly exposed to alcohol while being decanted at the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre. He voices thoughts that go against the governmental conditioning, such as the beauty of the ocean and the moon, the idea of monogamy (only one sexual partner), and the desire to be alone. Despite his inadequacies, he is intriguing to Lenina, who travels with him to the Savage Reservation. He connects with the illegitimate son of the Director, John, (later the Savage), and arranges for John’s transport back to London, where he uses his presence to humiliate the Director. This brings him a very short-lived fame. He becomes very popular upon the introduction of the Savage, but his popularity dies down and he is back where he started when the Savage refuses to show himself off at a meeting and then causes a riot at the Hospital for the Dying. Eventually, the World Controller Mustapha Mond deports Bernard Marx and his friend Helmholtz Watson to an island for other unorthodox figures, removing their threatening ideas from the ideal society.

The Savage (John): We first meet John when Bernard and Lenina go to the Savage Reservation. He is the illegitimate son of Linda, a Beta (second) class woman who was impregnated twenty-five years ago by the Director (Tomakin), and then disappeared and brought up in the Reservation. He becomes a curiosity in London, after traveling back with Bernard and Lenina. Bernard uses his illegitimate status to embarrass the Director. Lenina comes on to him several times, but although he finds her beautiful, almost to the point of obsession, he violently rejects her because he finds her to be a manifestation of the new civilization he despises. When his mother, Linda, dies, he causes a riot in the Hospital for the Dying and is arrested. He flees to an abandoned lighthouse with the hopes of starting over, creating his own self-made, independent, and organic society. But even this turns him into a public figure when two workers record him whipping himself in atonement. Despairing, having lost all his ideals and hope, he hangs himself. Reporters find him, and this is the final event of the novel.

Mustapha Mond: Mustapha Mond is the World Controller for Western Europe, one of ten World Controllers. We first meet him on the tour of the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre, where he tells the students of the horrifying familial patterns, such as monogamy and the mother-child bond, that existed before the new civilization was erected. We find out later that he was once a very successful scientist who unfortunately did too much independent work. He was threatened with deportation to an island if he did not change his ways, and given the alternative of going to Controller Training. He picked the Controller Training. He has an important conversation with the Savage following the Savage’s arrest. They speak of God, literature, and other subversive subjects. Although Mustapha Mond has read the Bible and some Shakespeare, he insists that only he who makes the rules can break them. He connects with the Savage on some levels, in the grand scheme of things, he is by no means a character against the establishment.

Helmholtz Watson: Helmholtz Watson is Bernard’s confidante. He is a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering. He is strongly built and handsome, but his remarkable intelligence isolates him from colleagues and peers. Amidst his excellence with sports, women, and activities, he agonizes over an interest in something else, but of what he is not sure. He is unsatisfied. He is a frustrated writer. He too goes against the establishment, which get him in trouble when his bosses, the powers-that-be, discover a poem he has written about being alone. Eventually, through his association with Bernard and the Savage, he is deported to an island.

Ford: Ford is the surrogate, and surrogate word, for God in the new civilization. People say things like 'Oh, Ford!; and 'Fordey!' The new sign, replacing the cross, is a T, or a cross with the top chopped off. 'Ford' is later revealed to be a corruption of the word Freud, otherwise known as the last name of the psychologist Sigmund Freud, whose psycho-sexual theories are controversial. Mustapha Mond explains that Ford, or Freud, as he used to call himself when speaking of psychological matters, was the first to reveal the perversion, misery, and dangers of family life.

Minor Characters

Henry Foster: Henry Foster is one of Lenina’s lovers, the first we meet. He helps give the tour of the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre.

Linda: Linda is the mother of the Savage, or John. She was of the Beta, or second caste. Twenty-five years ago, she went on a vacation with Tomakin, the Director, to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico. While there, she hit her head and disappeared, and he returned to civilization without her. Later, she is rescued by people of the Reservation, and unable to escape, gives birth to John. She is trapped, and cannot return to civilization now that she has had a live birth and has lived in the Reservation. She returns to London with her son, Lenina, and Bernard. She is put on permanent soma-holiday and observed as a specimen of the ugliness of old age. She wakes just once, mistaking John for her lover on the Reservation, recognizes him as her son, and dies of the shock of this realization.

George Edzel: George Edzel is one of the men with whom Lenina has had sex He is of the same caste as Bernard, yet he is a finer, more typical specimen. Lenina comments that he is charming, yet she wishes his ears weren’t so big.

Benito Hoover: Benito Hoover is another man that Lenina has slept with. She comments that he is charming, yet recalls that he really is too hairy with his clothes off. He is very good-natured, which irks Bernard to no end. He is the sunny reality which Bernard does not like or trust, though Bernard accepts his friendship during his popular phase upon the discovery of the Savage.

Popé: Popé is Linda’s Indian lover while she is on the Reservation. He has long, black braids and wears a large silver bracelet with turquoise. John resents Popé very much. For one thing, Popé brings his mother mescal, which keeps her drugged and unapproachable, then leaves her sick. He even tries to stab Popé at one point, but Popé is too strong and catches his wrist.

Fanny Crowne: Fanny Crowne is one of Lenina’s coworkers and a good friend. Through her discussions with Lenina in Chapter 3, we learn much of the sexual politics of Brave New World. That they share the same last name is purely coincidental, since only ten thousand last names exist in the whole World State.

Morgana Rothschild: Morgana is a very minor character. Bernard, without thinking, sits next to her at the orgy-porgy and immediately regrets it because she has a unibrow. She is more enthusiastic about him, though.

Fifi Bradlaugh: Fifi is a minor character as well, appearing only at the orgy-porgy. Bernard is angry with himself for sitting next to the ugly Morgana and the intimidatingly attractive Fifi, and wishes he’d chosen the seat between Clara and Joanna.

Clara Deterdling: Clara has pretty much the exact same minor role as Joanna, as an attractive guest at the orgy-porgy who Bernard compares with the unattractive Morgana Rothschild. Bernard wishes he’d sat next to Clara and Joanna instead, because they are more attractive, or as the novel’s lingo goes, pneumatic.

reporters: They swarm around the savage to get his story.

Reuben Rabinovitch: Reuben Rabinovitch is a little Polish boy that World Controller Mustapha Mond tells the student tour group about. He was the catalyst for the discovery of hypnopaedia, or sleep-teaching, which is widely used at the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre.

Tom Kawaguchi: Tom is a man at Bernard’s Solidarity Service day. Bernard is angry at himself for not sitting between Joanna Diesel and Clara Deterdling, and calls Tom a lout when Tom enters late and gets that coveted seat.

Joanna Diesel: Joanna has the same minor role as Clara Deterdling, as an attractive guest at the orgy-porgy who Bernard compares with the unattractive Morgana Rothchild. Bernard wishes he’d sat next to Clara and Joanna instead, because they are more attractive, or as the novel’s lingo goes, pneumatic.

Old Mitsima: An elder in the pueblo who teaches John pottery.

Kiakime: The marriage of this pueblo girl to another man makes John long for his missed opportunities. He stands at the edge of a cliff and contemplates suicide, discovering Time, Death and God.

Objects/Places

Bokanovsky's Process: Basically, this process involves letting the egg 'bud' and creates up to ninety-six embryos from each bud, each of which will grow into a human being. The Director calls the Bokanovsky process 'one of the major instruments of social stability.'

Soma: Soma is the drug that people take in half-gramme tablets to get away from it all. It produces a joyful effect in which all bad things are simply whisked away. It is on hand at all times. For most of their lives, the citizens of the Brave New World are doped up. John, or the Savage, is pretty much the only one in the book who has never taken soma. The creation and introduction of soma is as such: Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized in A.F. 178, and six years later, it was being produced commercially.

Orgy-Porgy: A meeting of about a dozen men and women where they pass 'the loving cup' of strawberry ice cream spiked with soma, sing Solidarity anthems, see Ford, and have sex. Bernard goes to one of these orgy-porgies. At the end of the novel, it is, for a good part, the orgy-porgy that occurs outside of the Savage’s refuge that drives him to his suicide.

Violent Passion Surrogate: Once a month, people are required to go to the conditioning centre to have their systems flooded with adrenaline, which provides them with their ration of fear and rage, without actually having to act on any of it.

Hypnopaedia: Hypnophaedia is sleep-teaching. We first see this in the Director’s tour. It is a series of repeated sayings used to teach children everything from their place in society to clever little sayings and proverbs. Basically, it is a form of thought control, or the imposing of a mind-script. While the children at the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre are napping, these 'lessons' are played time and time again, thousands of times between the ages of three and sixteen.

Feelies: These are the popular films. Filmgoers sit in special chairs that allow them to feel, and to interact, with the movie. The plots are simple, and often involve sex. Lenina takes The Savage to one of these feelies. She enjoys it very much, but he is horrified.

Sexual Hormone Chewing Gum: This is chewed by men, for instance, Bernard, to attract women. Benito Hoover gives him several packs to congratulate him on his achievement with the Savage.

The Savage Reservation, aka Malpais: The Savage Reservation, or Malpais: The Savage Reservation, or Malpais, is filled with sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds, where things considered abominations, such as marriage, religion, disease, and wild animals still exist. The Reservation is in New Mexico. Malpais means 'bad country' in Spanish.

Slough Crematorium: Lenina and Henry Foster fly over this building on their way to the concert. In the crematorium, the gases produced are treated and ninety-eight percent of the phosphorous is removed for further use. Phosphorus is then used for fertilizer. Henry comments that it is a fine achievement that people can continue being socially useful even after they’re dead.

Synthetic Music: This music comes out of speakers and has a calming effect. It is used at feelies, which are popular sensory movies.

Solidarity Service Day: This is an act compulsory for high-caste people. They gather together for soma and an orgy, aka orgy-porgy.

The Loving Cup: The Loving Cup is passed around at the compulsory Solidarity Service Day orgy, aka orgy-porgy, which Bernard attends. It is filled with strawberry ice cream, spiked with soma.

Central London Hatching and Conditioning Center: This is the building where the embryos are created and conditioned.

Alpha: Alpha is the highest caste in the caste system. Alphas have the highest level of intelligence and attractiveness.

Epsilon: Epsilon is the lowest caste in the caste system. They possess little to no human intelligence, and they are used only as workers.

Soma-Holiday: A soma-holiday refers to the drugged state one enters after taking a large dose of soma, a drug which is widespread and commonplace, used for relaxation and to maintain social stability.

The Other Place: Linda refers to the world outside Malpais, the Savage Reservation, as the Other Place.

Hospital for the Dying: All aging and dying people are sent to this hospital so that others in society will not be exposed to anything but eternal youth and vitality. Linda, the mother of The Savage, is put on permanent soma-holiday and sent to the Hospital for the Dying. Due to the time she spent lost at the Savage Reservation, she aged, a phenomenon unknown outside the reservation.

Death Conditioning: Children are brought to the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying and given chocolate ice cream as part of their Death Conditioning, in which they learn to accept death as a part of life.

Delta workers: These dozens of identical twins, dressed in mandatory khaki, are only one step up from the bottom caste, Epsilons. They staff the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying.

Lighthouse: The Savage exiles himself to the lighthouse after his mother Linda dies. He plans to garden there and start anew, away from the World State, a society he rejects. Once there, some low-caste people spy on him, and alert reporters to his unfamiliar lifestyle. Much to his dismay, he becomes a public sensation and this spurs an orgy/riot outside the lighthouse. Following this, The Savage hangs himself in the lighthouse and several reporters discover him.

The Feely Corporation: This company produces the 'feelie' films, which are so popular in the World State. Feelies are the popular films. Filmgoers sit in special chairs that allow them to feel, and to interact, with the movie. The plots are simple, and often involve sex. Lenina takes The Savage to one of these feelies. She enjoys it very much, but he is horrified.

Decanting: Decanting takes the place of live birth, which no longer exists in the World State. In the World State, human beings do not reproduce in the traditional way, that is, through sex. Instead, there is a complicated scientific process that resembles that of a test-tube baby, involving extracted ovaries and the close monitoring and control of the end product. It is a scientific process described in great detail by the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning in the first chapter. There no longer exists such a thing as a live (viviparous) birth; in fact, the students are horrified even to recall that such a thing once existed. Human beings do not say that they were 'born'; they say that they were 'decanted'.

Alpha Plus Intellectuals: This is the top-ranking social caste in the novel. Bernard Marx is an alpha-plus intellectual, as is Helmholtz Watson.

Pregnancy Substitute: Since there is no live birth or pregnancy, only decanting, it is suggested that women take a pregnancy substitute, which lasts several months. The procedure is not described in detail. It is compulsory at age twenty-one, but some women have it as early as seventeen.

Ectogenesis: This is the scientific process of the breaking up, or budding, of the egg, which is done at the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre.

Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning: The process of raising a person in the World State includes this procedure, done with young babies while they are being brought up in the Hatchery and Conditioning Centres. Nurses supervise the linking of objects with positive or negative feelings and conditions. For example, in Chapter 2, to keep Deltas away from books and flowers, the babies are exposed to a combination of these two things along with electric shocks and sirens and alarms. The infants therefore associate the unpleasant noises and feelings with the books and flowers, and do not like these objects anymore.

Malthusian Belt/Thomas Malthus: Lenina Crowne and other high-caste women wear these belts. They are fashionable (Lenina’s is green and fancy) and on these belts, they carry their contraception at all times. Malthus was an eighteenth century writer who, put most simply, discussed the problematic nature of unchecked population growth when combined with other factors, such as the inability of food production to keep up with the demand for food.

Sigmund Freud: Sigmund Freud was an Austrian-born psychologist. He is considered the father of modern psychology. He is famous and controversial for his psycho-sexual theories, which often involve family dynamics, including the Oedipus Complex.

motto: The motto of the World State is: 'Community, Identity, Stability'

Social Predestination Room: It is in this room that the embryos are treated in scientific ways so that they will become members of the caste system.

Freemartins: These are the embryos that are created genderless.

Caste System: The people of the World State are all part of a rigid caste system. It goes, in descending order, Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons.

Beta: This is the second-highest caste in the caste system. Betas possess human intelligence, though not as much as Alphas or Alpha Plus Intellectuals.

Delta: Delta is the fourth caste in the system, outranking only the sub-human Epsilon caste. The Deltas are used mainly as workers.

Ivan Pavlov: Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was a Russian-born behavioral psychologist who developed the idea of conditioning. He worked with dogs, teaching them to associate the sound of a ringing bell with the appearance of meat. The meat made the dogs salivate. Eventually, the very sound of the bell, even when unaccompanied by the reward of meat, elicited the conditioned response, salivation.

A.F.: This refers to After Ford, or the years after the death of the figure of Ford. Ford is the surrogate, and surrogate word, for God in the new civilization. People say things like 'Oh, Ford!' and 'Fordey!' The new sign, replacing the cross, is a T, or a cross with the top chopped off, which alludes to the Model T, the first Ford (as in the motor vehicle company) car. 'Ford' is also a corruption of the word Freud, otherwise known as the last name of the psychologist Sigmund Freud, whose psycho-sexual theories, many of which involve family dynamics, are controversial. Mustapha Mond explains that Ford, or Freud, as he used to call himself when speaking of psychological matters, was the first to reveal the perversion, misery, and dangers of family life.

Malthus: Thomas Robert Malthus was a eighteenth-century writer whose An Essay on the Principle of Population was published in 1798. It has two postulates: that food is necessary for the existence of man, and that passion between the sexes is necessary and will persist. Therefore, an unchecked population is problematic when combined with the inability of food production to keep up with population growth.

fordship: A title of authority; named after the great Ford (Freund).

Centrifugal bumble-puppy: This is a game that children play. It involves a steel ring and a ball.

Stoke Poges Club: Lenina and Henry go to this club to dance to synthetic music by Calvin Stokes and His Sixteen Sexophonists.

Obstacle Golf: This is one of the many games which the people of the World State play.

Bottled: This is the slang term for people who have taken soma.

Fordson Community Singery: This is where Bernard goes for the orgy-porgy

Mescal: Mescal is a hallucinogenic. Linda, the mother of the Savage, takes it in mass quantities because it takes her away from her life at the Savage Reservation, Malpais, and because it has a similar effect to soma. Pope, her Indian lover, brings it to her in liquid form in a gourd.

Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Savage reads this while still at the Reservation, Malpais. He continually makes references, including full quotes, to Shakespeare plays, when feeling strong emotions. For instance, he recites part of Romeo's speech describing Juliet when he is looking at Lenina, and he recites part of Hamlet's speech, when he tries to kill his mother's lover, Pope. The Savage is excited to find out that World Controller Mustapha Mond is also familiar with Shakespeare.

Quotes

Quote 1: "Community, Identity, Stability". Chapter 1, pg. 1

Quote 2: "The operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months' salary," The Director, Chapter 1, pg. 5

Quote 3: "And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny." Chapter 1, pg. 16

Quote 4: "What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder." The Director, Chapter 2, pg. 22

Quote 5: "These," he said gravely, "are unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical facts are unpleasant." The Director, Chapter 2, pg. 24

Quote 6: "Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta." Sleep-teaching, Chapter 2, pg. 27

Quote 7: "Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desire and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions... Suggestions from the State." Chapter 2, pg. 28-29

Quote 8: "In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau: averted themselves from that unsavoury reputation." Chapter 3, pg. 34

Quote 9: "You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 3, pg. 34

Quote 10: "Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. The smile on Bernard Marx's face was contemptuous." Chapter 3, pg. 35

Quote 11: "Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches." Sleep-teaching, Chapter 3, pg. 49

Quote 12: "All of the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 3, pg. 54

Quote 13: "The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity." Chapter 4, Part 2, pg. 65

Quote 14: "Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
Skies are blue inside of you,
The weather's always fine;
For
There ain't no Bottle in all the world
Like that dear little Bottle of mine."
Calvin Stopes and His Sixteen Sexophonists, Chapter 5, Part 1, pg. 76

Quote 15:
"Ford, we are twelve; oh make us one,
Like drops within the Social River;
Oh, make us now together run
As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.
Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,
Annihilating Twelve-in-One!
We long to die, for when we end,
Our larger life has but begun." Orgy-porgy, Chapter 5, Part 2, pg. 81

Quote 16: "a gramme in time saves nine," Lenina, Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89

Quote 17: "One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments," Lenina, Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89

Quote 18: "A gramme is better than a damn." Lenina, Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89

Quote 19: "When the individual feels, the community reels." Lenina, Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 94

Quote 20: "Cleanliness is next to fordliness." Lenina, Chapter 7, pg. 110

Quote 21: "Yes, and civilization is sterilization." Bernard, Chapter 7, pg. 110

Quote 22: "Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World hatcheries and Awonawilona." Chapter 8, pg. 128

Quote 23: "The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behavior. Murder kills only the individual-and, after all, what is an individual?... We can make a new one with the greatest ease-as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself." The Director, Chapter 10, pg. 148

Quote 24: "Why was that old fellow [Shakespeare] such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excriciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating X-rayish phrases... No, it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?... I don't know." Helmholtz Watson, Chapter 12, pg. 185

Quote 25: "Put your arms around me...Hug me till you drug me, honey...Kiss me till I'm in a coma. Hug me honey, snuggly..." Lenina, Chapter 13, pg. 194

Quote 26: "They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision! Fiendishly laughing, they had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. 'O brave new world!' Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. 'O brave new world!' It was a challenge, a command." Chapter 15, pg. 210

Quote 27: "Hesitant on the fringes of the battle, 'They're done for,' said Bernard and, urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward to help them; then thought better of it and halted; then, ashamed, stepped forward again; then again thought better of it, and was standing in an agony of humiliated indecision-thinking that they might be killed if he didn't help them, and that he might be killed if he did-when (Ford be praised!), goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in their gas-masks, in ran the police." Chapter 15, pg. 214

Quote 28: "Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get...And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!... Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!... Of course [Othello is better than those feelies]. But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, pg. 220

Quote 29: "Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, pg. 221

Quote 30: "All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, pg. 225

Quote 31: "We can't allow science to undo its own good work." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 227

Quote 32: "God in the safe and Ford on the shelves." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 231

Quote 33: "The Gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; providence takes its cue from men." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 236

Quote 34: "There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 238

Quote 35: "In fact', said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'

'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence.
'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said." Chapter 17, pg. 240

Quote 36: "We want the whip!" Chapter 18, 257

Quote 37: "Fry, lechery, fry! ... Oh, the flesh!... Kill it, kill it," The Savage, Chapter 18, pg. 258

Quote 38: "Oh, my God, my God!" The Savage, Chapter 18, pg. 264

Quote 39: "Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.
'Mr. Savage!'
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east..." Chapter 18, pg. 259

Topic Tracking: Government

Chapter 1

Government 1: The bleak, dominating Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, a government-controlled building, is the first thing we see in the novel, accompanied by the World State motto: "Community, Identity, Stability" Chapter 1, pg. 1

Government 2: The government of the World State controls not only the social castes and mental processes of the embryos, but also the climates for which they are being designed and in which they will develop.

"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny." Chapter 1, pg. 16

Chapter 2

Government 3: The government also controls desire and consumption by creating and destroying the demand for certain objects through the careful and intentional training of infants.

Government 4: The government controls the past by suppressing it entirely.

Government 5: "Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desire and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions... Suggestions from the State." Chapter 2, pg. 28-29

The government uses sleep-teaching to create and reinforce the divides between the castes.

Chapter 3

Government 6: Mond, as World Controller, has participated in suppressing the past and all forms of individualism and culture. History is mocked and seen basically as bull.

Government 7: Mond is explaining that the government controls not only mental processes, but physical processes as well, such as aging.

Chapter 5, part 1

Government 8: The government controls birth, life, and death. When people die, they are sent to a government-controlled crematorium where the phosphorous is extracted from their ashes. This phosphorous is useful as fertilizer.

Chapter 5, part 2

Government 9: The "orgy-porgy" which Bernard and eleven other people attend is a government-sponsored and mandatory ceremony. It is important for two reasons. First, the participants summon up Ford, the god-surrogate created by the government. Ford is an all-powerful deity whose name derives from Sigmund Freud, a controversial psycho-sexual psychotherapist, and the concept of the Ford automobile company. Second, the orgy-porgy is mandatory, which shows how the government controls the sexual behavior of the citizens of the World State. The orgy-porgy is representative of how the government controls both religion and sexual practice.

Chapter 6, part 2

Government 10: The Director has the authority to reprimand Bernard for expressing thoughts that go against the teachings of the government.

Chapter 7

Government 11: Although the government has contained the people of Malpais, they do not control what goes on there, and therefore, there are all sorts of activities prohibited and considered pornographic in the World State, such as a variety of religions, monogamy, and parenthood.

Chapter 10

Government 12: The Director's humiliation is unprecedented. The caste system in the World State is rigid: superiors are superiors and inferiors are inferiors. Authority in the World State is not questioned, and certainly not challenged. For this reason, Bernard's upheaval of the Director is shocking.

Chapter 11

Government 13: The government takes infants in for Death Conditioning; infants get used to death as a part of life. They are rewarded with chocolate ice cream.

Chapter 15

Government 14: The Savage has attempted to overthrow the order of the government-controlled hospital, but the government has prepared measures against this type of event. The Savage is powerless against the government. They retaliate and regain control with soma gas and pre-recorded anti-riot speeches. The Savage is unable to cause chaos.

Chapter 16

Government 15: Mustapha Mond is a very multi-dimensional character. Although he is a figure of high authority, as one of only ten World Controllers, he has a background in subversive science. It is important to note that although he does own these texts, and he does discuss them with the Savage, he is not in the slightest bit at risk for being subversive, and upholds and believes in the codes of the World State to the fullest.

He is very well respected, though it is rumored that he owns forbidden texts such as the Bible. His power is never questioned by subordinates, who fear and respect his authority.

Chapter 17

Government 16: In this long and illuminating monologue, Mond makes clear to the Savage that the concept of God is not compatible with the government of the World State, and therefore, God no longer exists. The government of the World State is so absolute, that it has eliminated God. Mond also declares that the desire of the people, not just the government, has eliminated God.

"The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men" Chapter 17, pg. 236 The satisfaction of the desires of the people is what maintains stability, and with God and religion, this satisfaction of desire could not exist. Sin, religious morality, and righteousness are now outdated concepts. This discussion with Mond convinces the Savage that civilization makes him sick, and propels his self-exile.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority

Chapter 1

Inferiority 1: The embryos are divided into different castes right from the start, even before they are decanted as human beings. There is a predetermined split between superior and inferior prior to "birth."

Chapter 2

Inferiority 2: The government uses sleep-teaching to reinforce a sense of superiority on the part of the Alphas and a sense of inferiority on the part of the Epsilons.

Chapter 3

Inferiority 3: From the very first moment we encounter Bernard, he is surly and seen unfavorably by others, and snubbed.

Inferiority 4: Fanny talks behind Bernard's back. She thinks he is inferior and is surprised that Lenina is interested in him because he is physically not as adequate as other males of his Alpha-plus caste.

"Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. The smile on Bernard Marx's face was contemptuous." Chapter 3, pg. 35

Inferiority 5: Bernard feels inferior because he is shut out of the conversation between Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator. They talk as if he is not there. He is disgusted with how they talk about Lenina in purely a sexual context, as if she were just meat. He compounds his feeling of being shut out by shutting himself out, and this makes people dislike him even more.

Chapter 4, Part 1

Inferiority 6: For some reason, Bernard can not accept the sexual morality of the World State, even though he was sleep-taught the moral codes just like everyone else. He feels emotions, which in general is an oddity, but especially, he feels intense jealousy when Lenina goes to Henry Foster. It reminds him that although he (that is, Bernard) is higher-ranking, he is physically inferior to Henry Foster and all of the other men of his own Alpha-plus caste. He feels this constantly.

Chapter 4, Part 2

Inferiority 7: Bernard's intense feeling of inferiority and isolation causes him to be insecure about his authority role. As a result, he acts arrogant to the castes below him and his boasting often repels his only friend, Helmholtz Watson.

Chapter 5, Part 2

Inferiority 8: Bernard feels an intense sinking feeling of inferiority at the orgy-porgy. His feelings of inferiority deepen, because unlike others in his caste, Bernard does not feel the frenzy and excitement of the orgy-porgy. He criticizes himself for sitting next to unattractive women, and out of jealousy, he criticizes another man, calling him a lout because the man has gotten a seat between two better-looking women.

Chapter 6, Part 1

Inferiority 9: Bernard tries to explain his desire to be alone and to watch the night sky to Lenina. She does not understand, and she is horrified and cries and asks why he is so strange. He feels inferior. Finally, he gives up and takes some soma, and they end up having the same kind of casual sex that he was silently criticizing in the changing room with Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator.

Chapter 6, Part 2

Inferiority 10: Bernard's feeling of inferiority causes him to act arrogant. He boasts to Helmholtz about the reprimand that he receives for expressing his subversive views to Lenina. Bernard has trouble with authority because he feels so uncomfortable with his own authority as a result of his own shortcomings and feelings of inadequacy.

Chapter 6, Part 3

Inferiority 11: The Savage Reservation is kept isolated by the use of electric fences.

They are trapped, which reinforces their inferiority. Bernard too feels trapped in his social caste.

Chapter 8

Inferiority 12: All his life, John has been an outcast at the reservation as a result of his mother's promiscuity. He does not look like other people on the reservation; John often feels inferior and different. Bernard identifies with this feeling of inferiority. He decides to invite John back to London because he knows that the presence of John, the Director's illegitimate child, will embarrass the Director and put Bernard in a superior position. Bernard is still angry about the Director reprimanding him. Bernard's vengeful nature is another product of his feelings of inferiority.

Chapter 10

Inferiority 13: Bernard has humiliated the Director by showing the Director's illegitimate son and his mother to a group of people. This is also a disgusting display of monogamy. Bernard does this to enhance his own image, to make up for his feelings of inferiority.

Chapter 11

Inferiority 14: Because Bernard humiliated the Director only to overcome his own inferior feelings, he does not know how to handle his fame, and becomes arrogant. He even lectures World Controller Mustapha Mond, who thinks that Bernard has gone mad to lecture him. Bernard acts egotistical, bragging to his only friend Helmholtz Watson, and does not see that his fame will be short-lived. People see through his momentary glory and still see him as physically inadequate.

Chapter 12

Inferiority 15: Bernard's fame is beginning to crumple, starting with the Savage's refusal to show up at an assembly where there are many powerful figures. Bernard realizes that he does not have control over the Savage, and he is left feeling inferior again.

Inferiority 16: Bernard introduces the Savage and Helmholtz, and he is jealous when they like each other more than they like him. He feels inferior and left out.

Chapter 15

Inferiority 17: Due to the lack of confidence in his social position, Bernard is so insecure that he must always be on the side that is popular. As a result, he does not really want to be seen with the Savage, because he knows that associating himself with a troublemaker and subversive thinker will bring his own fame down. Eventually he gives up and goes anyway, seeing no other choice.

Chapter 16

Inferiority 18: Bernard once again makes an ass of himself in front of authority and friends. He sobs when he is threatened with exile, and must be taken away and sedated. His crushing sense of inferiority and insecurity makes him unable to stand up for himself and unable to bear the consequences of his actions.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality

Chapter 1

Sexuality 1: The novel begins with a lengthy description of the test-tube process of reproduction. Reproduction is purely scientific, and sex is therefore a purely recreational activity in the World State.

Chapter 2

Sexuality 2: Males and females do not have sex for reproductive purposes, and embryos are created through a complicated scientific fertilization process. Children are brought up in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Therefore, there is no more mother-father relationship, and the very concept of such is considered pornographic.

Chapter 3

Sexuality 3: Sexual activity is such an everyday event that people start their sexual activity with erotic play as children.

Sexuality 4: Mustapha Mond describes the institutions of motherhood and monogamy with revulsion, as they are pornographic and horrible aspects of a past that no longer exists.

Sexuality 5: Lenina and Fanny's casual locker-room conversation establishes that promiscuity is seen as an asset. Fanny chastizes Lenina because her relationship with Henry is bordering on monogamous. In the World State, people are satisfied because they are taught that every one belongs to every one else. This conversation reveals much of the World State sexual code of morality.

Sexuality 6: Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator possess the typical and sleep-taught World State sexual morality. They participate in recreational and casual sex and believe that people are to be shared and do not belong to just one other person. Henry recommends that the Assistant Predestinator have sex with Lenina.

Chapter 4, Part 1

Sexuality 7: Before meeting Henry, with whom she has spent a lot of time, Lenina has been with many men, including George Edzel and Benito Hoover. She is very popular with the men because she is charming and attractive. She approaches Bernard in public to show the other people that she is a good citizen of the World State. She willingly shares herself sexually with others and ensures others know she is not monogamous with Henry Foster.

Chapter 5, Part 1

Sexuality 8: Lenina and Henry have casual sex after their date. They are not monogamous. Lenina remembers to take her contraception, which she carries with her in her Malthusian belt at all times.

Chapter 5, Part 2

Sexuality 9: The orgy-porgy is a government-sponsored, and, in fact, government-mandatory, sex ceremony. The twelve participants get downright ecstatic, take soma, summon Ford, and then enjoy each other.

Chapter 6, Part 1

Sexuality 10: Bernard cannot adapt to the casual sex mentality, though he was taught it in sleep-teaching and in practice just like everybody else. He tells Lenina that he wants passion, but she just does not understand.

Chapter 7

Sexuality 11: Linda practices the World State sexual code of morality, that is, casual and recreational sex, even when in the Savage Reservation, which values monogamy. She is therefore an outsider.

Chapter 9

Sexuality 12: The Savage (John) is awed by Lenina's beauty. Unlike the males of the World State, who see attractiveness as a precursor to sex, John thinks that he must prove himself worthy to earn her love. Having grown up with the sexual morality of the Reservation, he does not understand the sexual morality of the World State.

Chapter 11

Sexuality 13: Lenina takes the Savage (John) on a date to a feely, a sensory interactive movie, and, in accordance with what usually happens on dates in the time of the World State, she expects them to have sex. She is bewildered when he does not seem to want to have sex, and thinks that he does not want her. He wants her very much. Jon adheres to the sexual code of the Reservation, and of Shakespeare, where he must prove his worth to her and must not jeopardize a lady's purity.

Chapter 13

Sexuality 14: In this violent confrontation, John finally realizes what Bernard realized about Lenina: that like all women in the World State, she practices recreational sex without emotion. She sees sex as an exchange, while he sees it as his declaration of everlasting love for her. He realizes the depth of the difference between the way they think about sex. Lenina does not come to any such deep revelations. She still does not have the ability to see outside her conditioning, or the sexual context of the World State, and finds John violent and strange.

Chapter 18

Sexuality 15: The violent frenzy of the Savage whipping himself, the Savage whipping Lenina, and the roar of the helicopters, does not get murderous and riotous, but instead the scene turns into an orgy-porgy lasting until after midnight. The people simply do not understand violent and murderous feelings; they only understand the orgy-porgy as a way of expressing deep and intense feelings.

Chapter 1

The novel opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Over the door hangs the shield of the World State, on it written the motto "Community, Identity, Stability". Chapter 1, pg. 1 It is the year of stability A.F. 632. The thirty-four story building is cold, bleak and sterile.

Topic Tracking: Government 1

The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is leading a tour group of young students around a laboratory. They are scribbling down, word for word, whatever he says right into their notebooks. His scientific description that follows is long and extremely detailed. It is a privilege and an honor that the Director himself is speaking to a student group. The director is tall and thin with good posture, and he appears neither old nor young. He begins to explain the Hatcheries, starting with the incubators, where the ova and the male gametes are stored for the fertilization process. The modern fertilizing process begins with the removal of the woman's ovaries. "...the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months' salary," Chapter 1, pg. 5 The removed ovaries are used for a sort of test-tube reproduction. There is a complicated and detailed process in the lab through which the ovary is preserved, put in a dish with sperm, and fertilized.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 1

After fertilization, the next step determines where the zygote will fit in the caste system. The caste system goes, in descending order, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon. Alphas are the top of the caste system, the most physically and mentally capable, Betas are underneath, and Epsilons and Deltas are at the bottom, having no social function and operating simply as workers. The Alphas and Betas remain in the incubators, and the Deltas and Epsilons are brought out of the incubators after thirty-six hours to undergo Bokanovsky's Process. While normally, the egg buds into one adult, bokanovskification divides the egg into up to ninety-six buds, all of which form into a human being. He hails this process as one of the major instruments of social stability, and suggests that to bokanovskify indefinitely, would solve the whole problem. An ovary can yield up to fifteen thousand adult individuals.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 1

The tour group passes Henry Foster, who informs them that the record for bokanovskification is over seventeen thousand. He joins the tour.

The bottles with the individual buds, and the group of students, eventually move on to the Social Predestination Room, where Henry Foster continues the tour. The embryos are shaken into familiarity with movement and tested to determined gender, but most are made into freemartins, or infertile beings. The embryos are exposed to differing amounts of oxygen-the less oxygen, the lower the human intelligence, and the lower the human intelligence, the lower the caste. Therefore, Epsilons get the lowest amount of oxygen. The labs can also speed up the maturity rate of workers so they are fully developed as early as six years old. Some of the training gets workers ready for their jobs and climates; for instance, they are conditioned by blasts of hot air in tunnels if they are destined to go to work in the tropics.

Topic Tracking: Government 2

They pass by a nurse, who is probing one of the bottles with a long syringe. Henry Foster recognizes her as a woman named Lenina, who is described as uncommonly pretty, and she smiles at him. She is also described as having purple eyes, lupus, and red coral teeth. He confirms with her that they will be meeting on the roof at ten to five, as usual.

They pass by but do not have time to see the conditioning of the Alpha Plus Intellectuals. Predestination does not stop with biology; it continues on, as we see in the next chapter, into the realm of social nurturing.

Chapter 2

Henry Foster remains in the Decanting Room. The Director and the students pass into the Infant Nurseries and the Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Rooms. They witness an act of conditioning. The nurses lay out bowls, bowls of rose petals, and stacks of books, and then wheel in carts on which are riding identical Delta-class eight-month-old babies. As the babies crawl toward the stimuli, the Head Nurse turns on loud, violent explosions, alarm bells and sirens, and electrifies the floor. The next time the infants see the books and flowers, they associate them with the loud noises and shocks, and turn away in horror. The director is satisfied, for as Huxley writes, "What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder." Chapter 2, pg. 22 The Director is very satisfied with the demonstration and goes on to explain that the love of nature has been systematically destroyed. However, they are conditioned to love country sports, so that they will be effective consumers of sporting equipment.

Topic Tracking: Government 3

The Director tells the story of the young boy Reuben Rabinovitch, who was born to Polish-speaking parents. Polish, the director and the students quickly clarify, is a dead language, as are German and French. They also briefly, and with horror, discuss the idea of the "parent," a concept that no longer exists in the World State, where all children are decanted and raised in the Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre. There is an uncomfortable and embarrassed silence in the room as the Director speaks briefly of what is considered smut in the World Society: he reminds them that the parents were the father and mother. "These," he said gravely, "are unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical facts are unpleasant." Chapter 2, pg. 24

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 2
Topic Tracking: Government 4

One night, Reuben's parents accidentally left the radio on at night, and when they woke up in the morning, Reuben could repeat word for a word a lecture which had been broadcast during the night. With this event, the principle of hypnophaedia, or sleep-teaching was discovered. The early experiments attempted to use hypnophaedia to educate intellectuals, but this did not work because intellectual information was too rational to memorize. However, they switched to using hpynophaedia to deliver moral education, which, the Director claims, must never be rational. At this, he takes the students into a room where eighty infants lie sleeping. They are being sleep-taught a lesson called Elementary Class Consciousness. A voice from a loudspeaker is preaching softly and distinctly:

"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta." Chapter 2, pg. 27

The lesson will be repeated one hundred and twenty times, three times a week, for thirty months. After that, they will proceed to a more advanced lesson. The Director is very excited about hypnophaedia. He calls it the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time. In his excitement, he shouts and bangs on the table, waking the children.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 2
Topic Tracking: Government 5

Chapter 3

The tour proceeds outdoors. Outside in the playground, six or seven hundred naked children are running around. They play a game called Centrifugal Bumble-puppy, which involves a chrome steel tower and a rolling ball. It is a complicated game. The director points to a boy and a girl engaging in a sexual game. A nurse passes by with a howling little boy-he had seemed reluctant to engage in erotic play, so she is taking him to the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology. The Director tells the students an incredible story: before the time of Our Ford, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal and suppressed. The students are shocked to learn that in the time before Ford, erotic play was forbidden as children, adolescents, and at times all the way up until the people were over twenty years old.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 3

A deep voice suddenly breaks in, saying that the results were terrible. The voice belongs to his fordship Mr. Mustapha Mond, the Resident Controller for Western Europe. At this moment, the four thousand electric clocks at the Centre strike four. Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination purposefully turn their backs in the elevator to snub a man named Bernard Marx of the Psychology Department. He is described as having an "unsavoury reputation." Chapter 3, pg. 34.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 3

The students are awed by the presence of Mustapha Mond. He is one of the Ten World Controllers. He shares with the students: "You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk." Chapter 3, pg. 34 History has been wiped away like dust; all forms of past culture, even the memories of Ancient Greece and Rome, Jerusalem, Shakespeare, and Odysseus have been eliminated. The Director is nervous and confused to leave the students in the hands of Mond because he has heard rumors that the Controller has forbidden books like poetry and Bibles in his office.

Topic tracking: Government 6

As the work day ends, the rest of this chapter describes short interludes between Mustapha Mond and the students, Lenina and her friend Fanny, and Bernard Marx and Henry Ford. It is important to note that the lines of dialogue are like a collage, alternating without notice between the three conversations, and that the lines become shorter and shorter until they are not even attributed to a speaker anymore, and are only distinguishable by their subject matter. At one point, yet another simultaneous situation is added to the collage of dialogue: the voices of hypnopaedia, teaching the infants to provide the demand to industrial supply. They chant sayings such as "Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches" Chapter 3, pg. 49 over and over again. The following three paragraphs are the three collaged conversations.

In the lines involving Mustapha and his students, he is telling them about the horrors of motherhood and monogamy. He is drumming in the idea of stability and society functioning as a whole. He talks about the horrible conditions before the World State, and how people used to have to wait for the fulfillment of their desires. He explains that as a result of something called Christianity, women had to go on giving live birth.

He explains that there was also no caste system, and that sleep-teaching, or hypnophaedia, was prohibited. Following this description, the collaged passages of the three dialogues begin to get shorter and shorter, usually not more than a sentence long. He tells them about the Nine-Years' war, about the chemical warfare that went on, and the utter destruction which evolved into World Control. Advocates of culture and simple life were gunned down and gassed until the Controllers realized that conditioning and sleep-teaching were more effective, though slower means of control. There was a campaign enacted against the Past, and during this time, museums, monuments, and books were blown up. He speaks of the concept of God, soul, mortality, Heaven, and how they are defunct. He talks of soma: "All of the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects" Chapter 3, pg. 54 He tells them about how all physiological signs of aging have been abolished, as have changes in character -- only leisure and soma remain.

Topic Tracking: Government 7
Topic Tracking: Sexuality 4

Lenina goes to the changing room, where automatic faucets and powder machines and vacuum massage machines get her ready to go out for the evening. She bathes, covers herself in talcum powder and scent, and puts on her green (all Alphas wear green) outfit. She sees her friend Fanny, who tells her that she has been feeling out of sorts and will be having a Pregnancy Substitute. This is compulsory at twenty-one, though Fanny is only nineteen. It is a series of hormonal shots. Fanny is lecturing Lenina on how unhealthy and unfordly it is that she is seeing so much of one man, Henry Foster. She encourages her to sleep around more, for in the World State, everyone belongs to everyone else. Lenina agrees to make the effort. She expresses interest in Bernard, and Fanny is startled that her friend would go for someone with a bad reputation, someone also sort of short and ugly. Following this, the collaged passages of the three dialogues begin to get shorter and shorter, usually not more than a sentence long. Fanny tells her the rumor that the reason for his oddness is that he was given alcohol when his embryo was being created. Lenina puts on her Malthusian belt, which holds her supply of contraception. [Note: Malthusian is a reference to Thomas Robert Malthus, author of An Essay on the Principles of Population (1798), in which he states, among other things, population growth as problematic when combined with the inability to produce the necessary amount of food.]

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 5
Topic Tracking: Inferiority 4

The third series of conversations takes place between Henry Foster and the Assistant Predistinator in the changing room; Bernard is listening. They are talking about Lenina. Henry Foster tells his friend that he should have her sometime, and Bernard pales. He cannot believe that they are talking about Lenina like meat. He does not speak up. He recognizes much of what they say as clichés, just things they were sleep-taught. Following this, the collaged passages of the three dialogues begin to get shorter and shorter, usually not more than a sentence long. Bernard thinks about how he hates them, but also about how they are strong. The two agree that Fanny is nice too, but not nearly as attractive as Lenina. Bernard is thinking to himself that the only thing worse than how they think she is meat, is that she thinks of herself in this way as well. The two men notice that Bernard is glum and offer him soma pills. Bernard shouts, "Damn you!" and they leave unbothered, laughing at him. He leaves, cursing them as swine.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 5
Topic Tracking: Sexuality 6

Chapter 4, Part 1

Lenina walks into a room filled with Alpha Males. She is a popular girl who has, at one point, spent the night with almost all of them. She thinks of them as dear, charming boys. She sees George Edzel, whose ears she wishes weren't so big, and Benito Hoover, who she remembers was really too hairy with his clothes off. She sees Bernard Marx looking melancholy and small in the corner, and she goes over to him and in a loud voice announces that she wants to talk about making plans with him. Others look around curiously, and some of the men even gasp with astonishment. Lenina is pleased that she is publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Henry.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 7

She confirms that she would indeed like to go on a trip to New Mexico with him for a week in July, and Bernard is astonished by her attention, so much so that she wonders why he seems upset. He is confused, but she is bubbly and finds him funny. They get on the lift together and ride up to the roof, where Bernard finds the view of the blue horizon and Lenina's face breathtaking. Bernard watches her painfully as she runs toward Henry. The ever-sunny Benito Hoover approaches him cordially and offers him some soma, but Bernard has rushed away. Hoover chews some sex-hormone chewing gum

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 6

Lenina arrives four minutes late, as Henry points out to her. They get into a helicopter. The propellers spin extremely fast, and they rise above London. They fly over park-land where there are forests of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy steel towers and other World State consumer games. Lenina, true to her hypnopaedia, remarks what an ugly color khaki is. She watches the changing of the low-caste guards and thinks that she is glad she is not a Gamma.

Chapter 4, Part 2

Back to Bernard, who is walking across the roof with downcast eyes, guiltily and lonely, as if he were being pursued. He thinks about how the good intentions of Benito Hoover and Lenina make him suffer and feel even worse. He is upset by the power which Lenina seems to have over his emotions. He orders some Deltas to push his helicopter out onto the roof, but he does this with an arrogant tone. He is extremely self conscious of his own superiority and he finds it distressing to deal with the lower castes, since it reminds him of his physical inadequacies. He is shorter than most Alpha males, and there is a rumor that there was alcohol introduced to his solution when he was an embryo, stunting his growth. He envies men like Benito Hoover who take their caste position for granted and are comfortable in their social roles. Both men and women mock Bernard, and the self-consciousness and his actual appearance are reciprocal:

"The mockery made him feel like an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity." Chapter 4, Part 2, pg. 65

Bernard is headed for the buildings called the Bureaux of Propoganda and the College of Emotional Engineering. It houses the London newspapers as well. He meets with his friend Helmholtz Watson, a powerfully built and handsome Alpha-Plus man who is a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering. He has a mental excess, so intelligent that people talk behind his back, making him self-conscious, and feeling isolated from his colleagues and peers. He is a champion with sports, women, writing, and other activities, but at the bottom of it all, he feels that something is missing, though he is not sure what. Bernard watches with envy and bitterness as several girls make a very clear pass at Helmholtz, and feels the need to boast about his upcoming trip with Lenina. They fly back to Bernard's house, where Helmholtz talks about his frustration. He feels as though he has something inside him that he can't let out, like some kind of a power he cannot locate and does not know how to access. He is dissatisfied with his own writing, though it is well-known for its cleverness and invention, but he wants to use his words to pierce, to really make an impact. Bernard interrupts him with his paranoia that someone is at the door. He is suspicious with people because he feels that they are suspicious with him. He tries to explain and comes off as self-pitying. Helmholtz pities him as well, but wishes that Bernard would show some more pride.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 7

Chapter 5, Part 1

It is eight o'clock. Lenina and Henry Foster are leaving the Stoke Poges Club House after a round of Obstacle Golf. They get into a helicopter, the current method of transportation, and they pass by the Slough Crematorium, where Henry explains to Lenina that the balconies around the smokestacks are for collecting phosphorus, which is used as fertilizer. He is happy that people can continue being socially useful even after they are dead. Lenina comments on how strange it is that the nasty lower castes such as Gamma, can produce as much phosphorus as the high-caste Alphas, and Henry reminds her that all men are physico-chemically equal. Lenina has a flashback to her hypnophaedia, or sleep-teaching, how they told her that even Epsilons were useful, and she feels better and remarks that she is glad that she is not an Epsilon. Henry reminds her matter-of-factly that even if she were, her conditioning would have made her no less thankful. They agree that everybody is happy now, a phrase which had been repeated to them one hundred and fifty times a night every night for twelve years.

Topic Tracking: Government 8

They eat dinner and Lenina takes soma. It is a beautiful night and they go to a cabaret to dance to synthetic music -- Calvin Stopes and His Sixteen Sexophonists, who are performing the hit song "There ain't no Bottle in all the world like that dear little bottle of mine." The lyrics are as follows:

"Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
Skies are blue inside of you,
The weather's always fine;
For there ain't no Bottle in all the world
Like that dear little Bottle of mine
." Chapter 5, Part 1, pg. 76

They are "bottled," or under the influence of soma, and dance the night away under a sky that is always blue, or more accurately, covered in blue screens, so that they will not have to see dark night sky. The loudspeaker eventually ushers people home politely. They are bottled as they enter Henry's bedroom, but Lenina does remember, due the precautions instilled in her by hypnophaedia from ages twelve to seventeen, a Malthusian drill, to take all the contraceptive precautions before they have sex.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 8

Chapter 5, Part 2

The next day is an alternate Thursday, which is Bernard Marx's Solidarity Service Day, and he is late. He takes a taxi to the Fordson Community Singery, a glowing white building. The clock sounds out in a bass voice "Ford, Ford, Ford...". Bernard starts to criticize the people around him, and his stupidity in his choice of seating. Without looking, he has sat down next to Morgana Rothschild, whose unibrow he finds revolting, and Clara Deterdling, whose attractiveness he finds intimidating. He wishes he'd sat next to Fifi Bradlagh and Joanna Diesel, who are perfect specimens, but instead the lout Tom Kawaguchi takes that coveted seat. They pass around and drink from the Loving Cup, which is filled with strawberry ice-cream soma, and they hear the First and Second Solidarity Hymns, the following an excerpt from them:

"Ford, we are twelve; oh make us one,
Like drops within the Social River;
Oh, make us now together run
As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.
Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,
Annihilating Twelve-in-One!
We long to die, for when we end,
Our larger life has but begun
." Chapter 5, Part 2, pg. 81

The soma begins to take effect, and even Bernard is affected. They sing the third hymn, and the excitement becomes intense. A voice sounds Ford, Ford, Ford, again and again, and they feel like they are melting, and that the Greater Being is coming. The men and women are ecstatic. Feeling only peer pressure, Bernard joins them in their cries, though he feels nothing. They dance around in a circle and chant "orgy-porgy" in a feverish drumbeat. It is dark and warm in the room, and soon the circle breaks, and they fall onto the surrounding couches. The voice continues to croon and coo.

After the orgy-porgy, Fifi is in calm rapture. Bernard lies and tells her that he found the ceremony wonderful too. He feels miserable and isolated and utterly alone and all he can think of is Morgana's ugly eyebrow.

Topic Tracking: Government 9
Topic Tracking: Sexuality 9
Topic Tracking: Inferiority 8

Chapter 6, Part 1

Lenina is thinking about Bernard, and she decides that she finds him odd. She wonders whether she should cancel the trip to New Mexico, but she decides that the opportunity is too unique to pass up. She finds Bernard harmless, but she also finds his habits strange, such as his desire to spend time alone, and to spend time alone with her. He rejects the popular games and activities, saying that they are too crowded and he'd rather talk to her alone. She does not understand and talks him into going to the Semi-Demi-Finals of the Women's Heavyweight Wrestling Championships. Bernard is unfriendly to the people she introduces him to, and he refuses soma. Trying to encourage him to take the soma, Lenina tells him some of her sleep-taught wisdom, such as "a gramme in time saves nine," Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89 and "One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments," Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89 and "A gramme is better than a damn." Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89 Bernard tries to get her to look at the cloudy sky and Lenina is horrified. He tries to express to her how he wishes he were free, how he feels stifled, and how he wants to break free from the enslavement of his conditioning. Lenina does not understand and offers him soma. Bernard gives up. Soon he begins to laugh, and fondles her breasts, and once they are back in their rooms, he takes a lot of soma, and he and Lenina have sex. The next afternoon, when Lenina asks him if he had fun, Bernard is pained at the way she seems to degrade herself like meat, and he tells Lenina that he had not wanted the evening to end with their going to bed. Lenina is astonished and confused, unable to comprehend any other finale to an evening with a man. Bernard again tries to express himself to her, saying that he wants to know what true passion feels like. Lenina tries to ignore him, and when that does not work, she tells him another piece of wisdom that has been taught to her through sleep-teaching: "When the individual feels, the community reels." Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 94 Lenina tells her friend Fanny about the encounter.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 10
Topic Tracking: Inferiority 9

Chapter 6, Part 2

Word of Bernard's anti-establishment talk gets back to The Director. Bernard goes in to ask for a permit to visit The Savage Reservation in New Mexico with Lenina, and the Director seems surprised that he would want to go there. He tells Bernard a story of when he and a woman with yellow hair visited The Savage Reservation twenty-five years ago, and how she disappeared one night during a thunderstorm after going for a walk alone. His words trail off as he remembers... Bernard expresses his sympathies for the director, and the Director snaps at him, denying that there was anything emotional or indiscreet about the relationship. He continues to reprimand Bernard, having heard of the views he expressed to Lenina, and threatens to send him to Iceland if he hears of any more improper behavior. Bernard leaves the room not ashamed, but proud of the individual significance he has achieved by his subversive views. He tells an exaggerated version of this to his friend Helmholtz, expecting sympathy and admiration, but it does not happen. Helmholtz likes Bernard, and recognizes that he is the only one with whom he can discuss subjects important to him, but he hates Bernard's boasting and self-pity. Helmholtz' silence makes Bernard nervous, and he leaves the room.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 10
Topic Tracking: Government 10

Chapter 6, Part 3

Bernard and Lenina arrive via rocket in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They spend the night in a very nice hotel, but Bernard warns her that there will be none of the hotel amenities at the Savage Reservation. The Warden tells them of the electric fence surrounding the grounds. Lenina has already popped soma. He tells them that there is no escape from the reservation, that those who are born there are destined to die there. He describes the contents of the reservation: Indians, half-breeds, marriage, Christianity, superstitions, extinct languages such as Spanish, ferocious animals, diseases, priests, and lizards. Bernard wonders what it would be like to have a great affliction without taking soma, and Lenina persuades Bernard to take some soma. They fly to the valley of Malpais, where the reservation is located. They see electrocuted animal corpses around the fences.

The pilot of the helicopter tells Lenina not to worry, that the savages have enough experience with gas bombs to be of any danger to her.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 11

Chapter 7

Lenina sees the buildings of Malpais from a distance and condemns it as queer, along with the Indian guide who is taking them to the pueblo, or town. She complains about having to walk, and about how he smells. She is disgusted and incredulous when she sees the garbage and the flies where people are living. "Cleanliness is next to fordliness," Chapter 7, pg. 110 she says, and Bernard responds sarcastically with another piece of sleep-taught wisdom, "Yes, and civilization is sterilization." Chapter 7, pg. 110 She sees an old man for the first time and wonders what is wrong with him. Bernard explains that old age is prevented outside the reservation through inoculations and the artificially constructed chemical balance of youth which scientists create. Lenina searches her pockets and discovers with horror that she left her soma in the hotel. She is horrified to see women nursing, and more horrified when Bernard is touched by its intimacy. He even goes as far as to suggest that she has missed out on a wonderful experience, having not been a mother herself. She sees a ceremony and hears drums and mistakes it for an orgy-porgy. But soon the similarity disappears, as naked painted dancing people emerge, shrieking, with snakes, and crucifixes, whipping a young man until he bleeds. Lenina begins to sob.

They meet a young man, John, in Indian dress. He seems out of place because he speaks faultless English and has straw-colored hair and white skin. He asks Bernard and Lenina if they have come from The Other Place. He tells Bernard and Lenina that he wishes it had been him who had been whipped, because he wanted to be the sacrifice to Pookong and Jesus to make rain come and corn grow. Lenina stares at him, admiring his body, and he blushes. He explains that he and his mother Linda are strangers in the Reservation, and that she had come from The Other Place before he was born, with a man who was his father. Bernard listens intently. Linda fell while walking alone and was rescued by members of Malpais. The young man tells Bernard that the man's name was Tomakin. Bernard remembers that the Director's name is Thomas.

They go to meet Linda. Lenina is beyond disgusted with the wrinkled, filthy woman. She is revolted as Linda, reeking of alcohol, embraces her and even kisses her. Linda is absolutely ecstatic to see pieces of the Other Place, and she touches Lenina's clothing and babbles, reminiscing about aspects of World State life like the buildings, the contraception, and how much she has missed the sterility of civilization. She whispers about the madness of the Malpais society: they mend, they wear hard wool, and they practice monogamy. She does not understand a society in which everyone does not belong to everyone else, that is, have sex with everyone else, and all the women have turned against her because all the men used to come and have sex with her. She complains that her son John seems more influenced by the Indian society in which he has been raised than of the society of The Other Place, which she still holds as the ideal, and indeed, only way to live.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 11
Topic Tracking: Government 11

Chapter 8

Bernard asks John to tell him his life story. John starts as far back as he can remember. He remembers Linda singing lullabies from The Other Place to him as a child. One day, he woke with a start to find a man in the bed with Linda. He hears his mother say, "Not with John here." He feels threatened by the man, who proceeds to lift John by his arm and lock him out of the room. John remembers that Linda was upset with him because he was playing with the little boys and because she has been reprimanded for not knowing how to weave. She calls them savages and he does not understand what she means by that.

Popé, who is Linda's lover, who John remembers, brings Linda mescal, a hallucinogenic, in liquid form. Linda likes it because its effect reminds her of soma. John remembers finding Linda being held down by a group of dark women who whip her. He tries to console her after they leave, and she reacts violently, calling him a little idiot and a beast, and shouts that he has become a savage and her becoming pregnant with him has ruined her chances of being able to return to The Other Place. Suddenly, she changes, and puts her arms around him. Sometimes she did not get up at all, and lay in bed with Popé and mescal all day, forgetting to cook or clean her son.

John remembers the happy times, when she tells him stories about The Other Place, about flying and nice smells and beautiful colors and dancing and cleanliness. He remembers too the old men of the pueblo telling him of all of the gods and creation myths. He loves all the strange and wonderful stories that he hears.

"Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus fling up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World hatcheries and Awonawilona." Chapter 8, pg. 128

John remembers that the other boys say bad things about Linda and throw stones at him because so many men come to see her and because she does not know how to mend his ragged clothes. She teaches him to read, and says that one day he will be able to read the only book she has from The Other Place, The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo. Practical Instructions for Beta Embryo-Store Workers.

The more they make fun of him, the more he reads, because he recognizes that they cannot read. Linda does not know the answers to his more detailed scientific questions, so he gets his information from the myths that the old men tell him and accepts this information as more definite. One day Popé brings him The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The rhythm and beauty of the words remind him of the summer dances in the pueblo.

He watches the effect of the mescal on Linda, how she is deteriorating, and he hates Popé more and more. One day, thinking in his head of a quote from Shakespeare's play Macbeth, he decides to kill Popé with a knife, but Popé is too strong and catches his wrist, laughing at him. John feels tears of shame.

When John turns fifteen, Old Mitsima, an elder in the pueblo, teaches John pottery. They work all day and sing traditional songs and John feels pleasure at his achievement.

John witnesses the wedding of a girl named Kiakimé. He feels frustrated and hopeless because he realizes that he loved her and she is gone forever. He realizes once and for all that he is alone when he is not let into a special ceremony for men. He stands on the edge of a cliff and ponders jumping off. He sees blood dripping from his wrist. He has discovered Time and Death and God.

John has finished his story. He ends, saying that he is always alone. This awakens Bernard's own feelings of loneliness. John is surprised, because Linda has told him that in The Other Place, no one is ever alone. They exchange their feelings of loneliness and rejection and inferiority, and John tells him how he has fantasized and pretended to be Jesus crucified by scarring himself. Bernard is fascinated, though still disgusted at the thought of injury, dirt, or deformity. He asks John to come back to London with them, with a vengeful plan in mind, knowing full well that John is the illegitimate son of the Director. John asks that Linda come along as well. Bernard concurs. John quotes from another Shakespeare monologue, which starts with the phrase, "O brave new world..." John thinks of Lenina, beautiful and benevolent like an angel, and flushes, asking Bernard if he is married to her. Bernard does not understand what that means. John explains that it means forever, and Bernard laughs at the ridiculousness of this and tells him no. John is overjoyed and wishes to leave for London at once.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 12

Chapter 9

Reeling from her experience at The Savage Reservation, Lenina takes enough soma to go on an eighteen-hour soma holiday. Bernard leaves Lenina at the rest-house and contacts World Controller Mustapha Mond to arrange for the transport of John and Linda.

Meanwhile, back at the rest-house, John goes looking for Bernard but cannot find him. He breaks into Lenina's room and goes, with fascination and fetish, through her things, reveling in the novelty and the sweet smells. He sees her lying on the bed, vulnerable and beautiful, and leans over her and, cautiously as not to wake her up, breathlessly admiring her beauty, he recites from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, in which the speaker is idealizing Juliet's eyes, her hair, and her modesty. John is so awed by Lenina's beauty that he does not even dare touch her. He has a sudden temptation to pull the one zipper of her pajamas, but he immediately is ashamed of himself. He hears what he thinks is a fly in the air, and realizing with a panic that it is actually a helicopter, he runs into the other room to receive Bernard.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 12

Chapter 10

Bernard is late to a meeting with the Director and Henry Foster. The Director is talking badly about Bernard to Henry, about how the greater a man's intellectual talents, the more moral responsibility he has.

"The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual-and after all, what is an individual?... We can make a new one with the greatest ease-as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself." Chapter 10, pg. 148

Bernard finally enters the room. The Director reprimands him harshly in front of all the people at the meeting as a conspirator and suggests his deportation. The Director asks him if there is any reason why he should not be punished, and Bernard triumphantly presents Linda. Linda, old, fat, and terrifying to the spectators, rushes toward the Director, calling him by his first name and lunging with grief to embrace him when she sees that he does not remember her. The Director is horrified and mortified, and Bernard then prepares the biggest shock of all. John enters the room, falls to his knees and says clearly, "My father!" At this preposterous idea, the people break into whooping laughter. The Director looks around the office desperately, and humiliated, he runs out of the room with his hands over his ears.

Topic Tracking: Government 12
Topic Tracking: Inferiority 13

Chapter 11

London is in an uproar. Everyone wants to see the son of the director. Nobody, however, wants to see Linda, for she is not a real savage, only a mother, which is an obscenity. Her fatness and decayed state makes people feel sick, and she is put on permanent soma-holiday, in amounts so great that the doctor confides to Bernard that it will soon finish her off, shutting down her breathing. John objects, but the doctor tells him it is better than having her screaming mad all the time. So John gives in. Linda lives in a world of soma, with beautiful music, colors, and scent, a paradise without end. The doctor thanks Bernard for the wonderful example of senility.

Bernard is the big man on campus. Once inferior and looked down upon, he now receives gifts and is favored by many women. Even Fanny, Lenina's friend, agrees that Bernard is sweet. His success goes straight to his head. Bernard boasts about his conquests to Helmholtz, and when Helmholtz seems sad, Bernard interprets this as envy, and vows not to talk to him ever again. People talk behind his back, predicting that his fame will come to an end when the uproar ends, and that he will not find another Savage when this one loses its novelty.

He instructs that the Savage be shown all aspects of civilized life, and reports back to Mustapha Mond that the Savage shows little surprise at the civilized inventions. Mond finds his reports patronizing and thinks that Bernard has gone mad to lecture him, the World Controller, on the social order.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 14

John gets a tour of the Central London Hatchery facilities, similar to the tour the students received. He begins to violently retch. In an interlude, Bernard reports to Mond that the Savage (John) refuses to take soma and is distressed about the state of his mother and the fact that despite her repulsiveness, the Savage still goes to see her, citing this as an example of early conditioning. The Savage is taken to Eton, a private school community reserved for upper-caste boys and girls. Bernard hits on one of the teachers. John learns about freemartins, sterile and genderless members of the upper caste. John sees a film of some of the religious rituals he is familiar with, and asks with pain and bewilderment why all the students are laughing at it. Bernard continues to hit on the Head Mistress. They tell John of Death Conditioning, which begins at eighteen months. Tots spend two mornings a week in the Hospital for the Dying and are given chocolate ice cream, and they learn to take dying as any other process. They show John where they keep the daily soma rations. The containers remind him of a scene from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Topic Tracking: Government 13

Lenina is also experiencing a very gratifying popularity through her association with the spectacle. She has been asked by many clubs and organizations to speak about her fashionable glory, and important men are asking her out. Yet she recognizes that the fame is under false pretenses, because people keep asking her what it is like to make love to a Savage, and she must confess that she does not know. She has a crush on him, and notices him looking at her with desire, but does not understand why he does not make a move.

She takes him to a feely, a movie which is completely interactive, with tactile sensations and smells. It is called THREE WEEKS IN A HELICOPTER. AN ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALKING, COLOURED, STEREOSCOPIC FEELY. WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT. The Savage is completely bewildered by the fact that he can actually feel the sensations. A couple in the film makes love on a bearskin and he can feel every hair. He can even feel it when a black man falls out of a helicopter onto his head. He tries to woo a Beta blonde, but she is rescued by handsome Alphas and he is sent off for reconditioning. The Savage tells Lenina she ought not to see horrible things like that. She does not understand and thinks it was lovely. On the way home he wonders why he must be so queer and strange and spoil things. He says good night to her with a grimace, and she is stunned when he does not invite himself to go home with her to have sex. He goes back to his room and reads Shakespeare's Othello, which also features a black man. Lenina cries and takes some soma and goes to bed.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 13

Chapter 12

The Savage refuses to appear at an assembly Bernard has organized. He curses at him in Zuñi and spits on the ground, as he has seen Popé do. His refusal is an outrage, but the rage is directed mostly toward Bernard. The important and impatient assembly is very angry with Bernard. Bernard is shamed. Lenina is among those waiting. She is very anxious about the previous night's events. She actually feels emotions, both emptiness and nausea. The Arch-Community-Songster, a figure of authority who leads celebrations of Ford, tells Bernard to mend his ways, and then leaves with Lenina. Bernard, alone, begins to weep, and takes soma.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 15

Mustapha Mond is reading a report on biology. He decides to censor it and to supervise the author, watching out for further subversiveness lest it become necessary to deport him to an island. He writes in thick pen "Not to be published". Meanwhile, John is reading Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and the Arch-Community-Songster is hitting on Lenina. Bernard has gotten over his success and is very depressed. He tells the Savage about it and the Savage is sympathetic, remarking that he prefers the real Bernard to the falsely happy Bernard. Bernard is angry and blames him for his unhappiness. He plans for revenge against the Savage, since he is powerless against anyone else. He goes to see Helmholtz, who he had abandoned at the height of his brief success, and Helmholtz accepts him back. Bernard confides in him once again and Helmholtz consoles him. He finds out that Helmholtz too has been in trouble for writing some rhymes about being alone, a concept which goes against all principles of sleep-teaching. In spite of the fact that he is a marked man, Helmholtz is happy because he finally feels like he has been accessing the strange unknown well of feeling inside him of which he could not formerly identify. Bernard introduces Helmholtz and the Savage, and they get along so well that Bernard is immediately jealous and hateful. At their third meeting, Helmholtz shares his poetry with the Savage, who in turn shares poetry from an old book of his. They are both very excited. Bernard feels like the odd man out and tries to bring them down, jealous that his two friends like each other more than they like him. The Savage and Helmholtz discuss how Shakespeare's writing is far superior to that of the propaganda technicians. They laugh over the plot of Romeo and Juliet, especially the absurdity of a mother and father (that in itself is absurd) forcing the daughter to marry (also an absurd concept) someone who she did not want to be with, and the daughter actually preferring someone else. They laugh some more, and Helmholtz says that ridiculous situations were necessary in order to produce such wonderful writing.

"Why was that old fellow [Shakespeare] such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating X-rayish phrases... No, it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?... I don't know." Chapter 12, pg. 185

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 16

Chapter 13

Lenina is absent-minded and unhappy about The Savage (John) having rejected her. She turns down Henry Foster's offer to go to a feely, though it is one of her favorite things to do. He advises her to see a doctor for a Pregnancy Substitute or a Violent Passion Surrogate. Lenina is relieved, thinking that this is a simple solution to her unhappiness. Relieved, yet still distracted about John, she forgets to give an inoculation to one of the embryos. Later, in the changing room, her friend Fanny tries to talk her out of her fixation on this one man. She tells Lenina that she should just go and take him, and Lenina proceeds to his place. He is surprised to see her. She marches in, on soma, uninhibited. He falls to his knees and praises her beauty and perfection and says that the reason why he hasn't acted thus far is because he wanted to prove himself worthy, to do something like bring her a lion skin, like one had to do at Malpais. This irritates Lenina, who tells him that there are Epsilon workers to do all of the labor he is offering her. He tells her he loves her, and suggests marriage and recites Shakespeare. She is repelled by the completely novel and anti-societal idea of it, and loses her patience. She asks him once and for all if he likes her, and when he says yes, she throws herself at him. He is very conflicted, and voicing his conscience, he recites more Shakespeare about how he does not want his lust to overcome him. Lenina does not understand, and she undresses. He continues to recite Shakespeare. The Savage is terrified and backs up against the wall. Lenina tries out some of her own poetry, lyrics from popular songs: "Put your arms around me/ Hug me till you drug me, honey/ Kiss me till I'm in a coma/ Hug me honey, snuggly..." Chapter 14, pg. 194

The Savage interrupts her violently, taking her wrists and thrusting her away. He calls her a whore and tells her to leave before he kills her. Lenina is wounded and locks herself safely in the bathroom. He recites Shakespeare desperately and maniacally, trying to rid himself of her. He hands her clothes to her through the bathroom door, which she is terrified to open, and he answers the phone to find out that his mother is seriously ill. He rushes out the door and Lenina finally escapes, fleeing the building.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 14

Chapter 14

The Savage (John) is in the sixty-story tower called the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying to visit his mother Linda. The nurse is embarrassed and startled to hear the word "mother." She takes him to see Linda. Linda is watching television, and she hardly even recognizes him, so far gone is she on her soma-holiday. He remembers sentimentally how she sang him lullabies and taught him how to read and told him stories of The Other Place. A large group of Bokanovskivfied twins passes by and he is horrified. He hears them, the low-caste workers, and several children, there at the hospital for their Death Conditioning, talking badly about his mother. John has a violent reaction. He looks at Linda and feels waves of shame for abandoning her. Suddenly, Linda wakes, mistakes The Savage (John) for her lover at The Savage Reservation (AKA Malpais), Popé, finally recognizes him, and, remembering the reality of her situation, dies. The Savage (John) is beside himself with grief and shoves a twin to the floor in his rush to escape the building.

Chapter 15

The workers of the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying are one hundred and sixty two members of the Delta caste. They finish work at six o'clock and get a dose of soma. The Savage (John) shoves his way past them, disgusted with their identical facelessness, as they are receiving their soma ration. Observing them, he begins to formulate an idea.

"They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision! Fiendishly laughing, they had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. 'O brave new world!' Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. 'O brave new world!' It was a challenge, a command." Chapter 15, pg. 210

He notices that the Deltas are appalled, when upon noticing their unruliness, the distributor threatens to cut off the soma. The Savage has a revelation. Linda was a slave of soma, as are all others. He makes up his mind to set them all free. He shouts to them that soma is poison of mind and body, and that he comes to bring them freedom. The distributor slips away to make a phone call.

Meanwhile, Bernard and Helmholtz are wondering where the Savage has gone. They receive a call from the distributor, describing the commotion the Savage has caused at the Hospital for the Dying.

Back at the Hospital, the Savage is discarding the soma, preaching to the masses of Deltas, who are staring at him with horror. He is shouting "Free, free!" Bernard is horrified as well, and thinks that the Deltas are going to kill the Savage, but Helmholtz joins the Savage and they empty the entire box of soma out the window. The Deltas revolt. All hell breaks loose, and Bernard, utterly confused, first runs to help his friends, but then stops, must he stop his friends? He stands, "in an agony of humiliated indecision." Chapter 15, pg. 214 The police rush in, soma gas is pumped in, and from the Synthetic Music Box, a recording called Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength) plays. The Deltas are soon kissing and hugging each other and fresh pills are brought. The Sergeant takes the Savage and Helmholtz into custody. Bernard is surprised when the Sergeant wants him to come with them, but can't deny that he is a friend of the prisoners and goes along with them.

Topic Tracking: Government 14
Topic Tracking: Inferiority 17

Chapter 16

The three meet with his fordship World Controller Mustapha Mond in his study. Bernard is gloomy and pessimistic; Helmholtz is laughing aloud; and the Savage is restlessly pacing. He reads some of Mond's autobiography. Mond walks in and addresses the Savage directly, asking him if he likes civilization. Bernard is horrified when the Savage gives Mond the honest answer of no. During the course of their conversation, Mond makes an allusion to an image from a Shakespeare play, and the Savage lights up with pleasure, until Mond reminds him that only he, the World Controller, who makes the laws, can break them. Mond explains that Shakespeare is prohibited because it is old, and particularly because it is beautiful, and people should be attracted to new things, not old things. They discuss Othello, another Shakespeare play, and Mond explains the impossibility of such a play's existence: to have tragedy you need social instability and dissatisfaction.

"Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get...And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!... Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!... Of course [Othello is better than those feelies]. That's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art." Chapter 16, pg. 220

Even Helmholtz, who writes the feelies, agrees that they are idiotic. Mond continues:

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." Chapter 16, pg. 221

Mond stands up for society, defending the Bokanovsky twins. He explains that everyone can't be an Alpha-double-plus; they need morons to do moron work; an Alpha would go mad doing that kind of work. He describes the Cyprus experiment, in which twenty-two thousand Alphas were put on an island. There were strikes and chaos and soon there was a civil war, and the surviving three thousand members begged the government to retake control. Mond tells the Savage that the ultimate population, like an iceberg, has eight-ninths below the water line, and only one-ninth above. Those below like their work. In Ireland they tried instituting a four-hour work day, which only resulted in increased soma use; they took vacations from leisure.

Mond mentions the word science, a term unfamiliar to the Savage. Helmholtz is surprised to hear that Mond considers even some science to be subversive. Mond reveals that he was once a physicist, and came to realize that science is, "just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook." Chapter 16, pg. 225 He did some unorthodox physics once, and was threatened with being sent to an island. Bernard panics and begs, sobbing, not to be sent to an island. He has to be given soma and taken away.

Topic Tracking: Inferiority 18

The discussion continues without him. The Controller explains that on the island, he would have had the opportunity to do whatever unorthodox science he would have desired, but he chose to aspire to Controller status. He praises science, but adds, "we can't allow science to undo its own good work." Chapter 17, pg. 227

He explains that science must deal only with the most immediate problems, and nothing else. As a result of mass production, Ford changed the emphasis of science from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Up until the Nine Year's War, people still practiced traditional science. The Controller, by choosing the path of authority over unorthodoxy, chose to serve happiness. He asks Helmholtz what kind of island he would like, and Helmholtz replies that he would write better if the climate were thoroughly bad. The Controller tells him that he likes his spirit, though officially, he disapproves of it. Helmholtz leaves and goes to check up on Bernard.

Topic Tracking: Government 15

Chapter 17

A deep intellectual conversation takes place between Mustapha Mond and The Savage (John). The Savage tells Mond that as World Controller, he has sacrificed art and science for happiness. They have discussed art and science with Helmholtz and Bernard, and now move on to religion. Mond pulls out a copy of the Bible and other religious books and shows the Savage. He tells the Savage that he has "God in the safe and Ford on the shelves." Chapter 17, pg. 231 The Savage asks him why, if he knows about God, he does not tell people about him, and Mond replies that it is the same reason why he does not tell people about Othello: because it is old. Mond reads from two books, one by Cardinal Newman and the other by Maine de Biran, a philosopher. He reads a passage from the first book, which proclaims that we are not our own but the property of God, and that independence is an unnatural state, not made for men. From the second book, he reads a passage about the idea that weakness and fear of old age makes men turn to religion. The author believes that in his own experience, his religious sentiment is a result of the calming of his passions and a turn inward, away from worldly sensations and toward God.

Mond shuts the book. He explains that philosophers did not dream of the modern world, where old age does not exist; youth and prosperity, which now people have right up until the end, have replaced God. There are no losses for which religion must compensate, and youthful desires are unfailing. The Savage asks him if he is an atheist, and Mond says that he believes that there is a God that manifests himself in different ways to different men; now God manifests himself as an absence. The Savage says that it is Mond's fault, and Mond replies it is the fault of a civilization that has chosen science and machinery and universal happiness. They discuss solitude -- the Savage says that he feels God when he is alone, but Mond reminds him that people are taught to hate solitude, and life is arranged so that they almost never have it. The Savage thinks about how he was kept away from communal activities at the Reservation, and now in the World State he is prevented from being alone. The Savage makes a reference, through a quote from Shakespeare's King Lear, challenging Mond that God manages, punishes, and rewards. Mond tells him that the wounded and dying character in King Lear could have been content in the World State with a girl, some sex-hormone chewing gum, and a feely. Mond says, "The Gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; providence takes its cue from men." Chapter 17, pg. 236

The Savage tells Mond that the man is just as punished with his World State fate as he would be in the other situation, wounded and bleeding to death. Mond reminds him that he must stick to one context, that according to the context of the World State, which is the only context remaining, the man is happy. The Savage tells Mond that the Indians bear things patiently and do not let pleasant vices degrade them, and Mond tells him that they are not Indians, and that men acting on their own would degrade the social order. Mond also rejects the idea of self-denial and chastity, for civilization needs pleasant vices to remain stable. He also rejects the Savage's ideas of nobility and heroism, saying that there is no opportunity for them being that conditions are stable and there are no wars, all thoughts are pleasant, and if not, there is soma.

"There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is." Chapter 17, pg. 238

The Savage declares that life is too easy, that instead of learning to deal with aversive things, they simply have done away with them. He thinks of how they did away with his mother by putting her on soma-holiday. He asks Mond if there is something in living dangerously, and Mond explains the Violent Passion Surrogate treatments, which are mandatory and involve flooding a person's system with adrenin, the physiological equivalent of fear and rage without any of the inconveniences. The Savage says that he likes the inconveniences, the poetry, the danger, the freedom, the goodness, and the sin.

"In fact', said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence.
'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said.
" Chapter 17, pg. 240

Topic Tracking: Government 16

Chapter 18

Helmholtz goes to find the Savage, who looks ill. He asks him if he ate something that didn't agree with him, and the Savage says that he ate civilization, and that it poisoned and defiled him, and that he drank, according to Indian purification tradition, mustard and warm water. Helmholtz and Bernard are astonished at his self-punishment, and tell him that they have come to say goodbye before they are sent to an island. The Savage tells them that he asked to be sent away with them, and the Controller refused in order to continue the experiment of his immersion in society. He tells them that he too is planning to go away tomorrow, though he does not know where.

The Savage (John) travels through England until he reaches the lighthouse, believing it to be a difficult and harsh place to live. He has brought blankets, rope and string, nails, glue, tools, matches, pots and pans, seeds, and flour. He does not sleep his first night, and begs forgiveness from both western and reservation deities from Jesus to Pookong. He holds his arms out in crucifixion, begging in pain to be forgiven. He has many conflicting feelings. He has chosen the lighthouse because the view is so beautiful that it appears to be divine, yet he wonders who he is to be worthy of the hourly sight of loveliness. He climbs the stairs and looks up at the stars. He can see reeds and rushes, forest, water, spending entire days without seeing another human being.

He begins to farm the earth and cut trees; the physical labor makes him so happy that he is ashamed, thinking of Linda's unhappiness and the way he mistreated and abandoned her, and goes indoors to repent again. Later, three Delta-minus workers see him whipping himself, and the next day, reporters swarm around the lighthouse. They want to interview him, but the Savage curses him in Zuñi, the language of the Savage Reservation where he grew up, and sends the reporter on his way with a hard kick to his bottom. This makes major news in London, and more reporters show up and are similarly received. Helicopters arrive, and the Savage shoots them with arrows. Suddenly, he thinks of Lenina naked, soft, and tempting. He feels immense guilt and shame and whips himself in a frenzy, yelling terrible things about Lenina and apologies for his mother Linda.

A photographer from the Feely Corporation, which makes feelies, sensory interactive movies, has been hiding out near the lighthouse and catches the Savage's self-mutilation on film. He makes it into a film called The Savage of Surrey and it is an instant hit less than two weeks later. A great swarm of helicopters arrives at the lighthouse while the Savage is gardening. He runs for cover, then shakes the whip at them. They applaud and ask to see more of the whipping stunt, chanting "We want the whip!" Chapter 18, pg. 257 Things get rhythmic and riotous. All of a sudden, Lenina steps out of one of the helicopters, and her appearance drives him over the edge, which is what the crowd wanted. He attacks her with the whip, chanting "Fry, lechery, fry! ... Oh, the flesh!... Kill it, kill it," Chapter 18, pg. 258 and she shouts with fear for Henry Foster, who has already run away. The mob imitates his gestures, and then all of a sudden, somebody begins chanting "orgy-porgy", and this is exactly the riot of indulgence that it turns into. They do not leave until after midnight, and all are completely drugged on soma. The Savage lies in the brush, and wakes in the late morning. He wakes, remembers everything, and exclaims, "Oh, my God, my God!" Chapter 18, pg. 264

The next evening, a swarm of helicopters ten kilometers (over six miles) long show up, having heard about the previous night's orgy-porgy. The reporters walk into the open lighthouse and find that the Savage has hung himself.

"Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.
'Mr. Savage!'
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east..."
Chapter 19, pg. 259

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 15