Brave New World

Chapter 2 picks up with the same tour after the “Decanting Room” (where they leave Mr. Foster), as they move on to the “Infant Nurseries, Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Rooms” (19). Here, the Director demonstrates and explains the conditioning that takes place after the children have been “decanted” (or born).

They see nurses displaying and arranging roses and petals, and the D.H.C. tells them to “Set out the books” next (20). The nurses wheel in carts of identical eight-month-old children, who, upon seeing the flowers and books, crawl excitedly toward them and begin to play with them, only to have a horrible siren go off and to be shocked by the floor. The D.H.C. explains that this is to dissuade un-consumer-like behaviors, like reading or enjoying the countryside. Instead, people are encouraged to travel (consuming means of transport) in order to play sports “that entail the use of elaborate apparatus,” thereby consuming manufactured products (23). He continues to discuss methods of conditioning, including “sleep-teaching, or hypnopaedia” (25), although they have found that this method is only useful for “moral education,” rather than science (26). The group then views a section of Betas (the second-highest caste) having a lesson in “Elementary Class Consciousness” broadcast to them as they sleep, encouraging them to feel relief at not being a Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon (lower castes), and that they should not associate with any of them, but also relief at not being an Alpha, because they work so hard. The chapter ends with the D.H.C. accidentally waking the children being conditioned. 

Chapter 3 begins again with this tour group, still being led by the D.H.C. Now outside, the tour observes older children engaged in “ordinary erotic play”; a nurse removes a boy for not joining in, telling the Director she’s taking him for testing to see if he is “abnormal” (32). This prompts the Director to discuss the way things used to be, when overt sexual play was considered inappropriate, much to the amazement and horror of the tour members. He then spies Controller Mustapha Mond, “Resident Controller for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers” (34). At this point, the chapter begins to jump back and forth between three simultaneous scenes: the one with the tour group and Controller Mond; one following Bernard Marx “from the Psychology Bureau,” and his interactions with other Hatchery workers; and, finally, a scene following Lenina Crowne and her interactions with coworkers.

In the tour group scene, Mustapha Mond regales the group with a history lesson, although, “Our Ford” (referring to the World State’s revered hero, Henry Ford) has said that “History is bunk” (34). Mond speaks of how things were before the World State’s existence, when people procreated via intercourse and were part of monogamous, unstable family units, instead of “every one belong[ing] to every one else,” as they are now (40). He then goes into the history of how “World Control” came about: the “Nine Years’ War, the Economic Collapse” (48), as well as massacres, until they finally realized “force was no good” (50), and began implementing propaganda and “a campaign against the Past” (51). They also developed a drug with “[a]ll the advantages of Christianity and alcohol,” but “none of their defect” called soma (54). These factors led to the stabilization of society. 

Meanwhile, interspersed with the other scenes, we see Bernard Marx, an “Alpha Plus” who is short for his caste and rumored to have been accidentally given alcohol when he was “still in the bottle” (46), eavesdropping on his coworkers, Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator, as they discuss “having” Lenina Crowne. Marx’s co-workers think that Marx “would have liked to go up to them and hit them in the face” (46). His loathing of them is tempered by his fear of them, and when confronted and called “glum” and told to take some soma (53), he backs down.

In the third scene, Lenina is seen cleaning up after work with her coworker, Fanny, discussing their plans for the evening. Fanny reveals that she has been prescribed a “Pregnancy Substitute” in order to pull herself out of a funk. Lenina reveals she is going out with Henry Foster, yet again, and Fanny chides her for getting too monogamous with him. The conversation then turns to Bernard Marx, whom Lenina finds attractive and with whom she wants to see the “Savage Reservation” (44). Fanny is repulsed by Marx and reveals the rumor of the alcohol. Lenina is unswayed.