So, I miscounted the number of chapters, there are actually 18. Divide by three and that should be six chapters per week.  Today, I will be reviewing the first six chapters of “Brave New World”.

If we think about the world in 1931, when this book was written and apply our critical thinking and knowledge of history,  we know that the world is in the beginning of the Great Depression, there is the rise of Fascism with the election of Mussolini in 1922 and the writing of Mein Kampf in 1925 and with it came the pseudo-science of eugenics.  That is a good place to start since this is really how the book starts.  Eugenics is the manipulation of human reproduction to have more desired traits and less undesired traits.

The book begins with a tour of the factory where babies are created.  It follows through with raising after they are born and then character development begins.  Some good stuff happens while touring the factory, here are some concepts from Chapter 1.

  • Slogans – A unified population is an obedient population.  That is done by having people believe the same things.  To do that, they use a motto or slogan ‘Community, Identity, Stability’.
  • Classification of people –  The concept of Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon and Gamma (including + and – of each) individuals is introduced.  Knowing and accepting your place in society helps maintain order and stability.
  • Matching mental and physical maturity and purpose – Huxley is proposing through the director’s character that when the body is physically mature but the mind is not it leaves more time for a person to think.  This is an undesirable gap in that it could lead to rebellion or acting or learning or believing out of class.

In chapter 2, the babies are in the world.  There is a aversion to using the word born because that implies a natural childbirth which is not how they came to be.  This chapter is all about how the children are trained into class.  Including what clothes they wear, what stories they hear and what propaganda they are continuously looped.  

  • Learning + Nature = Wild = Ungovernable – There is a distinct attempt to keep people away from nature and natural experiences.  Too many and they start to rebel because they start to understand that this life is not right (proper).
  • Science requires understanding, Morality is programming – This one jumped out at me because I didn’t realize how true it was.  The spirit is that morality can be trained/taught/programed whereas truth cannot.  

Chapter 3 gets a little fuzzy as it is a series of flashbacks and character introductions.  It is a little hard to follow when it is a series of short sentences and jumping back and forth between different character groups.  Nevertheless there are some good new concepts.

  • Eroticism – Whether it is culturally expected promiscuity or something called ‘erotic play’ it seems like there is an supernatural focus on sexuality that is missing in a culture of test tube babies.  I think that it is further emphasized with the next concept.
  • Drugs – It seems that women are taking hormones for regularity or ‘Soma’ for feeling more or Soma for feeling less.  They are even required contraceptives so that women don’t end up pregnant.  There is also reference to abortion clinics so it must not be completely effective, pregnancy is definitely not permitted.

Chapters 4-6 are character and plot line development.  We find that there are some doubts in to complete belief in utopia.  The main character Bernard Marx opens up with a friend Helmholtz Watson and girlfriend Lenina.  He might have an ally in Helmholtz but Lenina cannot overcome her programming to even indulge in the fact that there might be more to life.

End Your Programming Routine: I am trying to get through the concepts that make this work a great text to end your programming, not spoil the book.  So, I could write more about the later chapters but they require more setup in terms of explaining what is happening in the plot rather than in your face mechanisms of control.  I did find it interesting that technology such as helicopters, rockets and television was mentioned in the 1930s.  I didn’t know that such technology existed at the time.  Stay tuned to chapters 7-12.