đ§Ș Hatchery and Conditioning Centre represents the core of a dystopian society where human reproduction has been industrialized through artificial fertilization and the Bokanovsky Process, enabling mass production of identical humans
đ„ The World State's motto "COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY" reveals the underlying social engineering that sacrifices individuality for rigid social order through predestination of humans into five distinct castes (Alpha through Epsilon)
đ§Ź Biological manipulation occurs at every stageâfrom controlled embryonic development to oxygen deprivation that deliberately stunts intelligence in lower castesâcreating humans specifically designed for predetermined societal roles
đ Conditioning techniques systematically shape preferences and aversions through environmental factors, chemical treatments, and physical stimuli, ensuring citizens "like their unescapable social destiny"
đ The clinical, factory-like approach to human creation reflects a society that values efficiency and social stability over freedom, with humans treated as products to be manufactured according to specifications
Brave New World By Aldous Leonard Huxley http://www.idph.net 18 de maio de 2002 2 IDPH SumĂĄrio One 5 Two 15 Three 23 Four 39 Five 49 Six 59 Seven 73 Eight 83 Nine 95 Ten 99 Eleven 103 Twelve 115 Thirteen 125 3 4 IDPH Fourteen 135 Fifteen 143 Sixteen 149 Seventeen 157 Eighteen 165 http://www.idph.net One A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World Stateâs motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABI- LITY. The enormous room on the ground ïŹoor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay ïŹgure, some pallid shape of academic goose-ïŹesh, but ïŹnding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables. âAnd this,â said the Director opening the door, âis the Fertilizing Room.â Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Di- rector of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely bre- athing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Directorâs heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horseâs mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments. âJust to give you a general idea,â he would explain to them. For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently- though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virture and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers 5 6 IDPH and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society. âTo-morrow,â he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacing geniality, âyouâll be settling down to serious work. You wonât have time for generalities. Meanwhile .â Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horseâs mouth into the notebo- ok. The boys scribbled like mad. Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, ïŹoridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-ïŹve? It was hard to say. And anyhow the question didnât arise; in this year of stability, A. F. 632, it didnât occur to you to ask it. âI shall begin at the beginning,â said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. âThese,â he waved his hand, âare the incubators.â And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. âThe weekâs supply of ova. Kept,â he explained, âat blood heat; whereas the male gametes,â and here he opened another door, âthey have to be kept at thirty- ïŹve instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes.â Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs. Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried il- legibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke ïŹrst, of course, of its surgical introduction- âthe operation undergone vo- luntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six monthsâ salaryâ; continued with some account of the tech- nique for preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his charges to the work tables, actually showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by drop onto the specially war- med slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle; how (and he now took them to watch the operation) this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa-at a minimum concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contents re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was again immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until deïŹnitely bottled; while the Gammas, Del- tas and Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovskyâs Process. http://www.idph.net IDPH 7 âBokanovskyâs Process,â repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words in their little notebooks. One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskiïŹed egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress. âEssentially,â the D.H.C. concluded, âbokanovskiïŹcation consists of a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding.â Responds by budding. The pencils were busy. He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was en- tering a large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in their turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded-bud out of bud out of bud-were thereafter-further arrest being generally fatal-left to develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety- six embryos- a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins-but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time. âScores,â the Director repeated and ïŹung out his arms, as though he were dis- tributing largesse. âScores.â But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage lay. âMy good boy!â The Director wheeled sharply round on him. âCanât you see? Canât you see?â He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. âBokanovskyâs Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!â Major instruments of social stability. Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskiïŹed egg. âNinety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!â The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. âYou really know where you are. For the ïŹrst time in history.â He quoted the planetary motto. âCommunity, Iden- tity, Stability.â Grand words. âIf we could bokanovskify indeïŹnitely the whole http://www.idph.net 8 IDPH problem would be solved.â Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology. âBut, alas,â the Director shook his head, âwe canât bokanovskify indeïŹnitely.â Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From the sa- me ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible-that was the best (sadly a second best) that they could do. And even that was difïŹcult. âFor in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reach maturity. But our business is to stabilize the population at this moment, here and now. Drib- bling out twins over a quarter of a century-what would be the use of that?â Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnapâs Technique had immensely accelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of at least a hundred and ïŹfty mature eggs within two years. Fertilize and bokanovskify-in other words, mul- tiply by seventy-two-and you get an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and ïŹfty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age. âAnd in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us over ïŹfteen thousand adult individuals.â Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be passing at the moment. âMr. Foster,â he called. The ruddy young man approached. âCan you tell us the record for a single ovary, Mr. Foster?â âSixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre,â Mr. Foster replied without hesi- tation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting ïŹgures. âSixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course theyâve done much better,â he rattled on, âin some of the tropical Centres. Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand ïŹve hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand mark. But then they have unfair advantages. You should see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! Itâs quite astonishing, when youâre used to working with European material. Still,â he added, with a laugh (but the light of combat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin was challenging), âstill, we mean to beat them if we can. Iâm working on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. Weâll beat them yet.â âThatâs the spirit I like!â cried the Director, and clapped Mr. Foster on the shouder. âCome along with us, and give these boys the beneïŹt of your expert http://www.idph.net IDPH 9 knowledge.â Mr. Foster smiled modestly. âWith pleasure.â They went. In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity. Flaps of fresh sowâs peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the lift- hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had only to reach out a hand, take the ïŹap, insert, smooth-down, and before the lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endless band, whizz, click! another ïŹap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of that slow interminable procession on the band. Next to the Liners stood the Matriculators. The procession advanced; one by one the eggs were transferred from their test-tubes to the larger containers; def- tly the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline so- lution poured in. and already the bottle had passed, and it was the turn of the labellers. Heredity, date of fertilization, membership of Bokanovsky Group- details were transferred from test-tube to bottle. No longer anonymous, but named, identiïŹed, the procession marched slowly on; on through an opening in the wall, slowly on into the Social Predestination Room. âEighty-eight cubic metres of card-index,â said Mr. Foster with relish, as they entered. âContaining all the relevant information,â added the Director. âBrought up to date every morning.â âAnd co-ordinated every afternoon.â âOn the basis of which they make their calculations.â âSo many individuals, of such and such quality,â said Mr. Foster. âDistributed in such and such quantities.â âThe optimum Decanting Rate at any given moment.â âUnforeseen wastages promptly made good.â âPromptly,â repeated Mr. Foster. âIf you knew the amount of overtime I had to put in after the last Japanese earthquake!â He laughed goodhumouredly and shook his head. âThe Predestinators send in their ïŹgures to the Fertilizers.â âWho give them the embryos they ask for.â âAnd the bottles come in here to be predestined in detail.â http://www.idph.net 10 IDPH âAfter which they are sent down to the Embryo Store.â âWhere we now proceed ourselves.â And opening a door Mr. Foster led the way down a staircase into the basement. The temperature was still tropical. They descended into a thickening twilight. Two doors and a passage with a double turn insured the cellar against any possible inïŹltration of the day. âEmbryos are like photograph ïŹlm,â said Mr. Foster waggishly, as he pushed open the second door. âThey can only stand red light.â And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summerâs afternoon. The bulging ïŹanks of row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes and all the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery faintly stirred the air. âGive them a few ïŹgures, Mr. Foster,â said the Director, who was tired of tal- king. Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few ïŹgures. Two hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide, ten high. He pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling. Three tiers of racks: ground ïŹoor level, ïŹrst gallery, second gallery. The spidery steel-work of gallery above gallery faded away in all directions into the dark. Near them three red ghosts were busily unloading demijohns from a moving staircase. The escalator from the Social Predestination Room. Each bottle could be placed on one of ïŹfteen racks, each rack, though you couldnât see it, was a conveyor traveling at the rate of thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. Two hundred and sixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thousand one hundred and thirty-six metres in all. One circuit of the cellar at ground level, one on the ïŹrst gallery, half on the second, and on the two hun- dred and sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existence-so called. âBut in the interval,â Mr. Foster concluded, âweâve managed to do a lot to them. Oh, a very great deal.â His laugh was knowing and triumphant. âThatâs the spirit I like,â said the Director once more. âLetâs walk around. You tell them everything, Mr. Foster.â http://www.idph.net IDPH 11 Mr. Foster duly told them. Told them of the growing embryo on its bed of peritoneum. Made them tas- te the rich blood surrogate on which it fed. Explained why it had to be sti- mulated with placentin and thyroxin. Told them of the corpus luteum extract. Showed them the jets through which at every twelfth metre from zero to 2040 it was automatically injected. Spoke of those gradually increasing doses of pitui- tary administered during the ïŹnal ninety-six metres of their course. Described the artiïŹcial maternal circulation installed in every bottle at Metre 112; showed them the resevoir of blood- surrogate, the centrifugal pump that kept the liquid moving over the placenta and drove it through the synthetic lung and waste product ïŹlter. Referred to the embryoâs troublesome tendency to anĂŠmia, to the massive doses of hogâs stomach extract and foetal foalâs liver with which, in consequence, it had to be supplied. Showed them the simple mechanism by means of which, during the last two metres out of every eight, all the embryos were simultaneously shaken into familiarity with movement. Hinted at the gravity of the so-called âtrauma of decanting,â and enumerated the precautions taken to minimize, by a suitable training of the bottled embryo, that dangerous shock. Told them of the test for sex carried out in the neighborhood of Metre 200. Explained the system of labelling-a T for the males, a circle for the females and for those who were destined to become freemartins a question mark, black on a white ground. âFor of course,â said Mr. Foster, âin the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred-that would really be quite sufïŹcient for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: theyâre decanted as freemartins-structurally quite normal (except,â he had to admit, âthat they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last,â continued Mr. Foster, âout of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention.â He rubbed his hands. For of course, they didnât content themselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could do that. âWe also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future .â He was going to say âfuture World controllers,â but correcting himself, said âfuture Directors of Hatcheries,â instead. The D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile. http://www.idph.net 12 IDPH They were passing Metre 320 on Rack 11. A young Beta-Minus mechanic was busy with screw-driver and spanner on the blood-surrogate pump of a passing bottle. The hum of the electric motor deepened by fractions of a tone as he turned the nuts. Down, down. A ïŹnal twist, a glance at the revolution counter, and he was done. He moved two paces down the line and began the same process on the next pump. âReducing the number of revolutions per minute,â Mr. Foster explained. âThe surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer inter- vals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen- shortage for keeping an embryo below par.â Again he rubbed his hands. âBut why do you want to keep the embryo below par?â asked an ingenuous student. âAss!â said the Director, breaking a long silence. âHasnât it occurred to you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity?â It evidently hadnât occurred to him. He was covered with confusion. âThe lower the caste,â said Mr. Foster, âthe shorter the oxygen.â The ïŹrst organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters. âWho are no use at all,â concluded Mr. Foster. Whereas (his voice became conïŹdential and eager), if they could discover a technique for shortening the period of maturation what a triumph, what a be- nefaction to Society! âConsider the horse.â They considered it. Mature at six; the elephant at ten. While at thirteen a man is not yet sexually mature; and is only full-grown at twenty. Hence, of course, that fruit of delayed development, the human intelligence. âBut in Epsilons,â said Mr. Foster very justly, âwe donât need human intelligen- ce.â Didnât need and didnât get it. But though the Epsilon mind was mature at ten, the Epsilon body was not ïŹt to work till eighteen. Long years of superïŹuous and wasted immaturity. If the physical development could be speeded up till it was as quick, say, as a cowâs, what an enormous saving to the Community! âEnormous!â murmured the students. Mr. Fosterâs enthusiasm was infectious. He became rather technical; spoke of the abnormal endocrine co-ordination http://www.idph.net IDPH 13 which made men grow so slowly; postulated a germinal mutation to account for it. Could the effects of this germinal mutation be undone? Could the indivi- dual Epsilon embryo be made a revert, by a suitable technique, to the normality of dogs and cows? That was the problem. And it was all but solved. Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexually mature at four and full-grown at six and a half. A scientiïŹc triumph. But socially use- less. Six-year-old men and women were too stupid to do even Epsilon work. And the process was an all-or-nothing one; either you failed to modify at all, or else you modiïŹed the whole way. They were still trying to ïŹnd the ideal com- promise between adults of twenty and adults of six. So far without success. Mr. Foster sighed and shook his head. Their wanderings through the crimson twilight had brought them to the neigh- borhood of Metre 170 on Rack 9. From this point onwards Rack 9 was enclosed and the bottle performed the remainder of their journey in a kind of tunnel, interrupted here and there by openings two or three metres wide. âHeat conditioning,â said Mr. Foster. Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miner and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. âWe condition them to thrive on heat,â concluded Mr. Foster. âOur colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it.â âAnd that,â put in the Director sententiously, âthat is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what youâve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.â In a gap between two tunnels, a nurse was delicately probing with a long ïŹne syringe into the gelatinous contents of a passing bottle. The students and their guides stood watching her for a few moments in silence. âWell, Lenina,â said Mr. Foster, when at last she withdrew the syringe and straightened herself up. The girl turned with a start. One could see that, for all the lupus and the purple eyes, she was uncommonly pretty. âHenry!â Her smile ïŹashed redly at him-a row of coral teeth. âCharming, charming,â murmured the Director and, giving her two or three little pats, received in exchange a rather deferential smile for himself. âWhat are you giving them?â asked Mr. Foster, making his tone very professi- http://www.idph.net 14 IDPH onal. âOh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness.â âTropical workers start being inoculated at Metre 150,â Mr. Foster explained to the students. âThe embryos still have gills. We immunize the ïŹsh against the future manâs diseases.â Then, turning back to Lenina, âTen to ïŹve on the roof this afternoon,â he said, âas usual.â âCharming,â said the Dhector once more, and, with a ïŹnal pat, moved away after the others. On Rack 10 rows of next generationâs chemical workers were being trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine. The ïŹrst of a batch of two hundred and ïŹfty embryonic rocket-plane engineers was just passing the eleven hundred metre mark on Rack 3. A special mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation. âTo improve their sense of balance,â Mr. Foster explained. âDoing repairs on the outside of a rocket in mid-air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the circulation when theyâre right way up, so that theyâre half starved, and double the ïŹow of surrogate when theyâre upside down. They learn to associate topsy-turvydom with weli-being; in fact, theyâre only truly happy when theyâre standing on their heads. âAnd now,â Mr. Foster went on, âIâd like to show you some very interesting conditioning for Alpha Plus Intellectuals. We have a big batch of them on Rack 5. First Gallery level,â he called to two boys who had started to go down to the ground ïŹoor. âTheyâre round about Metre 900,â
đ§ Conditioning the Future
đŹ Neo-Pavlovian conditioning transforms infant behavior through systematic association of stimuliâflowers and books paired with electric shocks create permanent aversions in Delta children, ensuring they never waste time on "useless" intellectual pursuits
đ€ HypnopĂŠdia (sleep-teaching) implants moral values and class consciousness without rational explanation, repeatedly whispering messages like "I'm glad I'm a Beta" until suggestions become the very fabric of children's minds
đ The World State engineers desires purely for economic purposesâconditioning children to hate nature but love outdoor sports requiring equipment maximizes consumption of manufactured goods and transportation
đ¶ Early sexuality is encouraged while intellectual curiosity is suppressed, creating a population focused on pleasure rather than questioning their reality
đ°ïž Controller Mustapha Mond embodies the system's ultimate authority, dismissing history as "bunk" and erasing cultural memory to maintain the carefully engineered social order
he explained. âYou canât really do any useful intellectual conditioning till the foetuses have lost their tails. Follow me.â But the Director had looked at his watch. âTen to three,â he said. âNo time for the intellectual embryos, Iâm afraid. We must go up to the Nurseries before the children have ïŹnished their afternoon sleep.â Mr. Foster was disappointed. âAt least one glance at the Decanting Room,â he pleaded. âVery well then.â The Director smiled indulgently. âJust one glance.â http://www.idph.net Two MR. FOSTER was left in the Decanting Room. The D.H.C. and his students stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to the ïŹfth ïŹoor. INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announ- ced the notice board. The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the ïŹoor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble. The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in. âSet out the books,â he said curtly. In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out-a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or ïŹsh or bird. âNow bring in the children.â They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted shelves, with eight- month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki. âPut them down on the ïŹoor.â The infants were unloaded. 15 16 IDPH âNow turn them so that they can see the ïŹowers and books.â Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses ïŹamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound sigruïŹcance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure. The Director rubbed his hands. âExcellent!â he said. âIt might almost have been done on purpose.â The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out un- certainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transïŹgured roses, crumpling the il- luminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, âWatch carefully,â he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal. The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever. There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded. The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror. âAnd now,â the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), ânow we pro- ceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.â He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something des- perate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires. âWe can electrify that whole strip of ïŹoor,â bawled the Director in explanation. âBut thatâs enough,â he signalled to the nurse. The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stifïŹy twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror. âOffer them the ïŹowers and the books again.â The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black she- ep, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased. http://www.idph.net IDPH 17 âObserve,â said the Director triumphantly, âobserve.â Books and loud noises, ïŹowers and electric shocks-already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder. âTheyâll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an âinstinctiveâ hatred of books and ïŹowers. ReïŹexes unalterably conditioned. Theyâll be safe from books and botany all their lives.â The Director turned to his nurses. âTake them away again.â Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to their dumb-waiters and whee- led out, leaving behind them the smell of sour milk and a most welcome silence. One of the students held up his hand; and though he could see quite well why you couldnât have lower-cast people wasting the Communityâs time over bo- oks, and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably decondition one of their reïŹexes, yet. well, he couldnât understand about the ïŹowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossi- ble for Deltas to like ïŹowers? Patiently the D.H.C. explained. If the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago (a century or thereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like ïŹowers-ïŹowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel them to consume transport. âAnd didnât they consume transport?â asked the student. âQuite a lot,â the D.H.C. replied. âBut nothing else.â Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gra- tuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of na- ture, but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they should keep on going to the country, even though they hated it. The problem was to ïŹnd an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found. âWe condition the masses to hate the country,â concluded the Director. âBut simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks.â âI see,â said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration. http://www.idph.net 18 IDPH There was a silence; then, clearing his throat, âOnce upon a time,â the Director began, âwhile our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy called Reuben Rabinovitch. Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents.â The Director interrupted himself. âYou know what Polish is, I suppose?â âA dead language.â âLike French and German,â added another student, ofïŹciously showing off his learning. âAnd âparentâ?â questioned the D.H.C. There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed. They had not yet learned to draw the signiïŹcant but often very ïŹne distinction between smut and pure science. One, at last, had the courage to raise a hand. âHuman beings used to be .â he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. âWell, they used to be viviparous.â âQuite right.â The Director nodded approvingly. âAnd when the babies were decanted .â ââBorn,ââ came the correction. âWell, then they were the parents-I mean, not the babies, of course; the other ones.â The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion. âIn brief,â the Director summed up, âthe parents were the father and the mother.â The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boysâ eye- avoiding silence. âMother,â he repeated loudly rubbing in the science; and, le- aning back in his chair, âThese,â he said gravely, âare unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical facts are unpleasant.â He returned to Little Reuben-to Little Reuben, in whose room, one evening, by an oversight, his father and mother (crash, crash!) happened to leave the radio turned on. (âFor you must remember that in those days of gross viviparous reproduction, children were always brought up by their parents and not in State Conditioning Centres.â) While the child was asleep, a broadcast programme from London suddenly started to come through; and the next morning, to the astonishment of his crash and crash (the more daring of the boys ventured to grin at one another), Lit- tle Reuben woke up repeating word for word a long lecture by that curious old writer (âone of the very few whose works have been permitted to come down to usâ), George Bernard Shaw, who was speaking, according to a well- authenticated tradition, about his own genius. To Little Reubenâs wink and http://www.idph.net IDPH 19 snigger, this lecture was, of course, perfectly incomprehensible and, imagining that their child had suddenly gone mad, they sent for a doctor. He, fortunately, understood English, recognized the discourse as that which Shaw had broad- casted the previous evening, realized the signiïŹcance of what had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press about it. âThe principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnopĂŠdia, had been discovered.â The D.H.C. made an impressive pause. The principle had been discovered; but many, many years were to elapse before that principle was usefully applied. âThe case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years after Our Fordâs ïŹrst T-Model was put on the market.â (Here the Director made a sign of the T on his stomach and all the students reverently followed suit.) âAnd yet .â Furiously the students scribbled. âHypnopĂŠdia, ïŹrst used ofïŹcially in A.F. 214. Why not before? Two reasons. (a) .â âThese early experimenters,â the D.H.C. was saying, âwere on the wrong track. They thought that hypnopĂŠdia could be made an instrument of intellectual education .â (A small boy asleep on his right side, the right arm stuck out, the right hand hanging limp over the edge of the bed. Through a round grating in the side of a box a voice speaks softly. âThe Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe. Although falling short of the length of the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile is at the head of all rivers as regards the length of its basin, which extends through 35 degrees of latitude .â At breakfast the next morning, âTommy,â some one says, âdo you know which is the longest river in Africa?â A shaking of the head. âBut donât you remember something that begins: The Nile is the .â âThe - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - the - second - in - length - of - all - the - rivers - of - the - globe .â The words come rushing out. âAlthough - falling - short - of .â âWell now, which is the longest river in Africa?â The eyes are blank. âI donât know.â âBut the Nile, Tommy.â âThe - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - second .â âThen which river is the longest, Tommy?â http://www.idph.net 20 IDPH Tommy burst into tears. âI donât know,â he howls.) That howl, the Director made it plain, discouraged the earliest invesïŹgators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach chil- dren the length of the Nile in their sleep. Quite rightly. You canât learn a science unless you know what itâs all about. âWhereas, if theyâd only started on moral education,â said the Director, leading the way towards the door. The students followed him, desperately scribbling as they walked and all the way up in the lift. âMoral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational.â âSilence, silence,â whispered a loud speaker as they stepped out at the fourte- enth ïŹoor, and âSilence, silence,â the trumpet mouths indefatigably repeated at intervals down every corridor. The students and even the Director himself rose automatically to the tips of their toes. They were Alphas, of course, but even Alphas have been well conditioned. âSilence, silence.â All the air of the fourteenth ïŹoor was sibilant with the categorical imperative. Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which the Director cautiously opened. They stepped over the threshold into the twilight of a shuttered dor- mitory. Eighty cots stood in a row against the wall. There was a sound of light regular breathing and a continuous murmur, as of very faint voices remotely whispering. A nurse rose as they entered and came to attention before the Director. âWhatâs the lesson this afternoon?â he asked. âWe had Elementary Sex for the ïŹrst forty minutes,â she answered. âBut now itâs switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.â The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay seftly hreathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. halted and, bending over one of the little beds, listened attentively. âElementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Letâs have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet.â At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch. â. all wear green,â said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, âand Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I donât want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. Theyâre too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. Iâm so glad Iâm a Beta.â http://www.idph.net IDPH 21 There was a pause; then the voice began again. âAlpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because theyâre so frightfully clever. Iâm really awfuly glad Iâm a Beta, because I donât 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 donât want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. Theyâre too stupid to be able .â The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows. âTheyâll have that repeated forty or ïŹfty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson.â Roses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiff of asaf?tida- wedded indissolubly before the child can speak. But wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the ïŹner distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour. For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnopĂŠdia. âThe greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time.â The students took it down in their little books. Straight from the horseâs mouth. Once more the Director touched the switch. â. so frightfully clever,â the soft, insinuating, indefatigable voice was saying, âIâm really awfully glad Iâm a Beta, because .â Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till ïŹnally the rock is all one scarlet blob. âTill at last the childâs mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the childâs mind. And not the childâs mind only. The adultâs mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides- made up of these sug- gestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!â The Director almost shouted in his triumph. âSuggestions from the State.â He banged the nearest table. âIt therefore follows .â A noise made him turn round. âOh, Ford!â he said in another tone, âIâve gone and woken the children.â http://www.idph.net 22 IDPH http://www.idph.net Three OUTSIDE, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the ïŹowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters. The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centri- fugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hur- led through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught. âStrange,â mused the Director, as they turned away, âstrange to think that even in Our Fordâs day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. Itâs madness. Nowadays the Controllers wonât approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.â He interrupted himself. âThatâs a charming little group,â he said, pointing. In a little grassy bay between tall clumps of Mediterranean heather, two chil- dren, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the focussed attention of scien- tists intent on a labour of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game. âCharming, charming!â the D.H.C. repeated sentimentally. âCharming,â the boys politely agreed. But their smile was rather patronizing. They had put aside similar childish amusements too recently to be able to watch them now without a touch of contempt. Charming? but it was just a pair of kids 23 24 IDPH fooling about; that was all. Just kids. âI always think,â the Director was continuing in the same rather maudlin tone, when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing. From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading by the hand a small boy, who howled as he went. An anxious-looking little girl trotted at her heels. âWhatâs the matter?â asked the Director. The nurse shrugged her shoulders. âNothing much,â she answered. âItâs just that this little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play. Iâd noticed it once or twice before. And now again to-day. He started yelling just now .â âHonestly,â put in the anxious-looking little girl, âI didnât mean to hurt him or anything. Honestly.â âOf course you didnât, dear,â said the nurse reassuringly. âAnd so,â she went on, turning back to the Director, âIâm taking him in to see the Assistant Supe- rintendent of Psychology. Just to see if anythingâs at all abnormal.â âOuite right,â said the Director. âTake him in. You stay here, little girl,â he added, as the nurse moved away with her still howling charge. âWhatâs your name?â âPolly Trotsky.â âAnd a very good name too,â said the Director. âRun away now and see if you can ïŹnd some other little boy to play with.â The child scampered off into the bushes and was lost to sight. âExquisite little creature!â said the Director, looking after her. Then, turning to his students, âWhat Iâm going to tell you now,â he said, âmay sound incredible. But then, when youâre not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible.â He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only ab- normal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed. A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it. âEven adolescents,â the D.H.C. was saying, âeven adolescents like yourselves .â âNot possible!â http://www.idph.net IDPH 25 âBarring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality-absolutely nothing.â âNothing?â âIn most cases, till they were over twenty years old.â âTwenty years old?â echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief. âTwenty,â the Director repeated. âI told you that youâd ïŹnd it incredible.â âBut what happened?â they asked. âWhat were the results?â âThe results were terrible.â A deep resonant voice broke startlingly into the dialogue. They looked around. On the fringe of the little group stood a stranger-a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very pier- cing and dark. âTerrible,â he repeated. The D.H.C. had at that moment sat down on one of the steel and rubber benches conveniently scattered through the gardens; but at the sight of the stranger, he sprang to his feet and darted forward, his hand outstretched, smiling with all his teeth, effusive. âController! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are you thinking of? This is the Controller; this is his fordship, Mustapha Mond.â In the four thousand rooms of the Centre the four thousand electric clocks si- multaneously struck four. Discarnate voices called from the trumpet mouths. âMain Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. Main Day-shift off .â In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the Assis- tant Director of Predestination rather pointedly turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau: averted themselves from that unsavoury reputation. The faint hum and rattle of machinery still stirred the crimson air in the Embryo Store. Shifts might come and go, one lupus-coloured face give place to another; majestically and for ever the conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women. Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door. His fordship Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the saluting students almost pop- ped out of their heads. Mustapha Mond! The Resident Controller for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten. and he sat down on the bench with the D.H.C., he was going to stay, to stay, yes, and actually talk to them. straight from the horseâs mouth. Straight from the mouth of Ford http://www.idph.net 26 IDPH himself. Two shrimp-brown children emerged from a neighbouring shrubbery, stared at them for a moment with large, astonished eyes, then returned to their amuse- ments among the leaves. âYou all remember,â said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, âyou all re- member, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Fordâs: History is bunk. History,â he repeated slowly, âis bunk.â He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chal- dees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk-and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk-and those
đ Brave New World Dystopia
đ§ Conditioning replaces history and family with a system where "everyone belongs to everyone else," eliminating emotional attachments through enforced promiscuity and chemical happiness
đïž The World Controllers deliberately destroyed historical knowledge and cultural artifacts to create stability, replacing traditional values with consumption-focused hypnopaedic programming
đ Soma serves as the perfect drugâ"euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant"âproviding all benefits of religion and alcohol without drawbacks, keeping the population docile
đ„ Social engineering through artificial reproduction, caste systems, and psychological manipulation creates humans designed to fulfill specific roles without questioning their purpose
đ The system's core philosophyâ"ending is better than mending"âpromotes constant consumption while eliminating privacy, individuality, and meaningful relationships
đ€ Characters like Bernard Marx and Lenina represent different responses to this systemârebellion through discomfort versus comfortable conformityâhighlighting the tension between stability and freedom
specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom-all were gone. Whisk- the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk. âGoing to the Feelies this evening, Henry?â enquired the Assistant Predestina- tor. âI hear the new one at the Alhambra is ïŹrst-rate. Thereâs a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say itâs marvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects.â âThatâs why youâre taught no history,â the Controller was saying. âBut now the time has come .â The D.H.C. looked at him nervously. There were those strange rumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controllerâs study. Bibles, poetry- Ford knew what. Mustapha Mond intercepted his anxious glance and the corners of his red lips twitched ironically. âItâs all right, Director,â he said in a tone of faint derision, âI wonât corrupt them.â The D.H.C. was overwhelmed with confusion. Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. The smile on Bernard Marxâs face was contemptuous. Every hair on the bear indeed! âI shall make a point of going,â said Henry Foster. Mustapha Mond leaned forward, shook a ïŹnger at them. âJust try to realize it,â he said, and his voice sent a strange thrill quivering along their diaphragms. âTry to realize what it was like to have a viviparous mother.â http://www.idph.net IDPH 27 That smutty word again. But none of them dreamed, this time, of smiling. âTry to imagine what âliving with oneâs familyâ meant.â They tried; but obviously without the smallest success. âAnd do you know what a âhomeâ was?â They shook their heads. From her dim crimson cellar Lenina Crowne shot up seventeen stories, tur- ned to the right as she stepped out of the lift, walked down a long corridor and, opening the door marked GIRLSâ DRESSING-ROOM, plunged into a de- afening chaos of arms and bosoms and underclothing. Torrents of hot water were splashing into or gurgling out of a hundred baths. Rumbling and his- sing, eighty vibro-vacuum massage machines were simultaneously kneading and sucking the ïŹrm and sunburnt ïŹesh of eighty superb female specimens. Every one was talking at the top of her voice. A Synthetic Music machine was warbling out a super-cornet solo. âHullo, Fanny,â said Lenina to the young woman who had the pegs and locker next to hers. Fanny worked in the Bottling Room, and her surname was also Crowne. But as the two thousand million inhabitants of the plant had only ten thousand names between them, the coincidence was not particularly surprising. Lenina pulled at her zippers-downwards on the jacket, downwards with a double-handed gesture at the two that held trousers, downwards again to lo- osen her undergarment. Still wearing her shoes and stockings, she walked off towards the bathrooms. Home, home-a few small rooms, stiïŹingly over-inhabited by a man, by a peri- odically teeming woman, by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease, and smells. (The Controllerâs evocation was so vivid that one of the boys, more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere description and was on the point of being sick.) Lenina got out of the bath, toweled herself dry, took hold of a long ïŹexible tube plugged into the wall, presented the nozzle to her breast, as though she meant to commit suicide, pressed down the trigger. A blast of warmed air dusted her with the ïŹnest talcum powder. Eight different scents and eau-de-Cologne were laid on in little taps over the wash-basin. She turned on the third from the left, dabbed herself with chypre and, carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand, went out to see if one of the vibro- vacuum machines were free. And home was as squalid psychically as physically. Psychically, it was a rab- http://www.idph.net 28 IDPH bit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene rela- tionships between the members of the family group! Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children (her children). brooded over them like a cat over its kittens; but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, âMy baby, my baby,â over and over again. âMy baby, and oh, oh, at my breast, the little hands, the hunger, and that unspeakable agonizing pleasure! Till at last my baby sleeps, my baby sleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth. My little baby sleeps .â âYes,â said Mustapha Mond, nodding his head, âyou may well shudder.â âWho are you going out with to-night?â Lenina asked, returning from the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated from within, pinkly glowing. âNobody.â Lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment. âIâve been feeling rather out of sorts lately,â Fanny explained. âDr. Wells advi- sed me to have a Pregnancy Substitute.â âBut, my dear, youâre only nineteen. The ïŹrst Pregnancy Substitute isnât com- pulsory till twenty-one.â âI know, dear. But some people are better if they begin earlier. Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises, like me, ought to have their ïŹrst Pregnancy Substitute at seventeen. So Iâm really two years late, not two years early.â She opened the door of her locker and pointed to the row of boxes and labelled phials on the upper shelf. âSYRUP OF CORPUS LUTEUM,â Lenina read the names aloud. âOVARIN, GUARANTEED FRESH: NOT TO BE USED AFTER AUGUST 1ST, A.F. 632. MAMMARY GLAND EXTRACT: TO BE TAKEN THREE TIMES DAILY, BE- FORE MEALS, WITH A LITTLE WATER. PLACENTIN: 5cc TO BE INJECTED INTRAVENALLY EVERY THIRD DAY. Ugh!â Lenina shuddered. âHow I lo- athe intravenals, donât you?â âYes. But when they do one good .â Fanny was a particularly sensible girl. Our Ford-or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters-Our Freud had been the ïŹrst to reveal the appalling dangers of family life. The world was full of fathers-was therefore full of misery; full of mothers-therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts-full of madness and suicide. âAnd yet, among the savages of Samoa, in certain islands off the coast of New http://www.idph.net IDPH 29 Guinea .â The tropical sunshine lay like warm honey on the naked bodies of children tumbling promiscuously among the hibiscus blossoms. Home was in any one of twenty palm-thatched houses. In the Trobriands conception was the work of ancestral ghosts; nobody had ever heard of a father. âExtremes,â said the Controller, âmeet. For the good reason that they were made to meet.â âDr. Wells says that a three monthsâ Pregnancy Substitute now will make all the difference to my health for the next three or four years.â âWell, I hope heâs right,â said Lenina. âBut, Fanny, do you really mean to say that for the next three moaths youâre not supposed to .â âOh no, dear. Only for a week or two, thatâs all. I shall spend the evening at the Club playing Musical Bridge. I suppose youâre going out?â Lenina nodded. âWho with?â âHenry Foster.â âAgain?â Fannyâs kind, rather moon-like face took on an incongruous expres- sion of pained and disapproving astonishment. âDo you mean to tell me youâre still going out with Henry Foster?â Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were also husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance. âThough you probably donât know what those are,â said Mustapha Mond. They shook their heads. Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy. âBut every one belongs to every one else,â he concluded, citing the hypnopĂŠdic proverb. The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable. âBut after all,â Lenina was protesting, âitâs only about four months now since Iâve been having Henry.â âOnly four months! I like that. And whatâs more,â Fanny went on, pointing an accusing ïŹnger, âthereâs been nobody else except Henry all that time. Has http://www.idph.net 30 IDPH there?â Lenina blushed scarlet; but her eyes, the tone of her voice remained deïŹant. âNo, there hasnât been any one else,â she answered almost trucuently. âAnd I jolly well donât see why there should have been.â âOh, she jolly well doesnât see why there should have been,â Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behind Leninaâs left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, âBut seriously,â she said, âI really do think you ought to be careful. Itâs such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-ïŹve, it wouldrlât be so bad. But at your age, Lenina! No, it really wonât do. And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man-why, heâd be furious if he knew .â âThink of water under pressure in a pipe.â They thought of it. âI pierce it once,â said the Controller. âWhat a jet!â He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains. âMy baby. My baby .!â âMother!â The madness is infectious. âMy love, my one and only, precious, precious .â Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; ïŹerce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder the- se poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didnât allow them to take things easily, didnât allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not condi- tioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty-they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and stron- gly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable? âOf course thereâs no need to give him up. Have somebody else from time to time, thatâs all. He has other girls, doesnât he?â Lenina admitted it. âOf course he does. Trust Henry Foster to be the perfect gentleman-always correct. And then thereâs the Director to think of. You know what a stickler .â Nodding, âHe patted me on the behind this afternoon,â said Lenina. âThere, you see!â Fanny was triumphant. âThat shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality.â http://www.idph.net IDPH 31 âStability,â said the Controller, âstability. No civilization without social stabi- lity. No social stability without individual stability.â His voice was a trumpet. Listening they felt larger, warmer. The machine turns, turns and must keep on turning-for ever. It is death if it stands still. A thousand millions scrabbled the crust of the earth. The wheels began to turn. In a hundred and ïŹfty years there were two thousand millions. Stop all the wheels. In a hundred and ïŹfty weeks there are once more only a thousand millions; a thousand thousand thousand men and women have star- ved to death. Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment. Crying: My baby, my mother, my only, only love groaning: My sin, my ter- rible God; screaming with pain,muttering with fever, bemoaning old age and poverty-how can they tend the wheels? And if they cannot tend the wheels. The corpses of a thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn. âAnd after all,â Fannyâs tone was coaxing, âitâs not as though there were anything painful or disagreeable about having one or two men besides Henry. And seeing that you ought to be a little more promiscuous .â âStability,â insisted the Controller, âstability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this.â With a wave of his hand he indicated the gardens, the huge building of the Conditioning Centre, the naked children furtive in the undergrowth or running across the lawns. Lenina shook her head. âSomehow,â she mused, âI hadnât been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately. There are times when one doesnât. Havenât you found that too, Fanny?â Fanny nodded her sympathy and understanding. âBut oneâs got to make the effort,â she said, sententiously, âoneâs got to play the game. After all, every one belongs to every one else.â âYes, every one belongs to every one else,â Lenina repeated slowly and, sighing, was silent for a moment; then, taking Fannyâs hand, gave it a little squeeze. âYouâre quite right, Fanny. As usual. Iâll make the effort.â Impulse arrested spills over, and the ïŹood is feeling, the ïŹood is passion, the ïŹood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream ïŹows smoothly down its appoin- ted channels into a calm well-being. (The embryo is hungry; day in, day out, http://www.idph.net 32 IDPH the blood-surrogate pump unceasingly turns its eight hundred revolutions a minute. The decanted infant howls; at once a nurse appears with a bottle of external secretion. Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers. âFortunate boys!â said the Controller. âNo pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy-to preserve you, so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all.â âFordâs in his ïŹivver,â murmured the D.H.C. âAllâs well with the world.â âLenina Crowne?â said Henry Foster, echoing the Assistant Predestinatorâs question as he zipped up his trousers. âOh, sheâs a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. Iâm surprised you havenât had her.â âI canât think how it is I havenât,â said the Assistant Predestinator. âI certainly will. At the ïŹrst opportunity.â From his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle, Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale. âAnd to tell the truth,â said Lenina, âIâm beginning to get just a tiny bit bored with nothing but Henry every day.â She pulled on her left stocking. âDo you know Bernard Marx?â she asked in a tone whose excessive casualness was evidently forced. Fanny looked startled. âYou donât mean to say .?â âWhy not? Bernardâs an Alpha Plus. Besides, he asked me to go to one of the Savage Reservations with him. Iâve always wanted to see a Savage Reservati- on.â âBut his reputation?â âWhat do I care about his reputation?â âThey say he doesnât like Obstacle Golf.â âThey say, they say,â mocked Lenina. âAnd then he spends most of his time by himself-alone.â There was horror in Fannyâs voice. âWell, he wonât be alone when heâs with me. And anyhow, why are people so beastly to him? I think heâs rather sweet.â She smiled to herself; how absurdly shy he had been! Frightened almost-as though she were a World ControUer and he a Gamma-Minus machine minder. âConsider your own lives,â said Mustapha Mond. âHas any of you ever en- http://www.idph.net IDPH 33 countered an insurmountable obstacle?â The question was answered by a negative silence. âHas any of you been compelled to live through a long time-interval between the consciousness of a desire and its fuïŹlment?â âWell,â began one of the boys, and hesitated. âSpeak up,â said the D.H.C. âDonât keep his fordship waiting.â âI once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wanted woud let me have her.â âAnd you felt a strong emotion in consequence?â âHorrible!â âHorrible; precisely,â said the Controller. âOur ancestors were so stupid and short-sighted that when the ïŹrst reformers came along and offered to deliver them from those horrible emotions, they woudnât have anything to do with them.â âTalking about her as though she were a bit of meat.â Bernard ground his teeth. âHave her here, have her there.â Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mut- ton. She said sheâd think it over, she said sheâd give me an answer this week. Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford.â He would have liked to go up to them and hit them in the face-hard, again and again. âYes, I really do advise you to try her,â Henry Foster was saying. âTake Ectogenesis. PïŹtzner and Kawaguchi had got the whole technique wor- ked out. But would the Governments look at it? No. There was something called Christianity. Women were forced to go on being viviparous.â âHeâs so ugly!â said Fanny. âBut I rather like his looks.â âAnd then so small.â Fanny made a grimace; smallness was so horribly and typically low-caste. âI think thatâs rather sweet,â said Lenina. âOne feels one would like to pet him. You know. Like a cat.â Fanny was shocked. âThey say somebody made a mistake when he was still in the bottle-thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol into his blood-surrogate. Thatâs why heâs so stunted.â âWhat nonsense!â Lenina was indignant. http://www.idph.net 34 IDPH âSleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There was something cal- led liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a law against it. The records survive. Speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefïŹcient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.â âBut, my dear chap, youâre welcome, I assure you. Youâre welcome.â Henry Foster patted the Assistant Predestinator on the shoulder. âEvery one belongs to every one else, after all.â One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopĂŠdia. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots! âOr the Caste System. Constantly proposed, constantly rejected. There was so- mething called democracy. As though men were more than physico-chemically equal.â âWell, all I can say is that Iâm going to accept his invitation.â Bernard hated them, hated them. But they were two, they were large, they were strong. âThe Nine Yearsâ War began in A.F. 141.â âNot even if it were true about the alcohol in his blood-surrogate.â âPhosgene, chloropicrin, ethyl iodoacetate, diphenylcyanarsine, trichlor- methyl, chloroformate, dichlorethyl sulphide. Not to mention hydrocyanic acid.â âWhich I simply donât believe,â Lenina concluded. âThe noise of fourteen thousand aeroplanes advancing in open order. But in the Kurfurstendamm and the Eighth Arrondissement, the explosion of the anthrax bombs is hardly louder than the popping of a paper bag.â âBecause I do want to see a Savage Reservation.â Ch3C6H2(NO2)3+Hg(CNO)2=well, what? An enormous hole in the ground, a pile of masonry, some bits of ïŹesh and mucus, a foot, with the boot still on it, ïŹying through the air and landing, ïŹop, in the middle of the geraniums-the scarlet ones; such a splendid show that summer! âYouâre hopeless, Lenina, I give you up.â âThe Russian technique for infecting water supplies was particularly ingeni- ous.â Back turned to back, Fanny and Lenina continued their changing in silence. âThe Nine Yearsâ War, the great Economic Collapse. There was a choice between http://www.idph.net IDPH 35 World Control and destruction. Between stability and .â âFanny Crowneâs a nice girl too,â said the Assistant Predestmator. In the nurseries, the Elementary Class Consciousness lesson was over, the voi- ces were adapting future demand to future industrial supply. âI do love ïŹying,â they whispered, âI do love ïŹying, I do love having new clothes, I do love .â âLiberalism, of course, was dead of anthrax, but all the same you couldnât do things by force.â âNot nearly so pneumatic as Lenina. Oh, not nearly.â âBut old clothes are beastly,â continued the untiring whisper. âWe always th- row away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better thast mending, ending is better .â âGovernmentâs an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the ïŹsts. For example, there was the conscription of consumption.â âThere, Iâm ready,â said Lenina, but Fanny remained speechless and averted. âLetâs make peace, Fanny darling.â âEvery man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry. The sole result .â âEnding is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches; the more stitches .â âOne of these days,â said Fanny, with dismal emphasis, âyouâll get into trou- ble.â âConscientious objection on an enormous scale. Anything not to consume. Back to nature.â âI do love ïŹying. I do love ïŹying.â âBack to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You canât consume much if you sit still and read books.â âDo I look all right?â Lenina asked. Her jacket was made of bottle green acetate cloth with green viscose fur; at the cuffs and collar. âEight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine guns at Golders Green.â âEnding is better than mending, ending is better than mending.â Green corduroy shorts and white viscose-woollen stockings turned down be- low the knee. http://www.idph.net 36 IDPH âThen came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousand culture fans gassed with dichlorethyl sulphide.â A green-and-white jockey cap shaded Leninaâs eyes; her shoes were bright gre- en and highly polished. âIn the end,â said Mustapha Mond, âthe Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but inïŹnitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo- Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopĂŠdia .â And round her waist she wore a silver-mounted green morocco-surrogate car- tridge belt, bulging (for Lenina was not a freemartin) with the regulation supply of contraceptives. âThe discoveries of PïŹtzner and Kawaguchi were at last made use of. An inten- sive propaganda against viviparous reproduction .â âPerfect!â cried Fanny enthusiastically. She could never resist Leninaâs charm for long. âAnd what a perfectly sweet Malthusian belt!â âAccompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Yearsâ War); by the suppression of all books pu- blished before A.F. 15O.â âI simply must get one like it,â said Fanny. âThere were some things called the pyramids, for example. âMy old black-patent bandolier .â âAnd a man called Shakespeare. Youâve never heard of them of course.â âItâs an absolute disgrace-that bandolier of mine.â âSuch are the advantages of a really scientiïŹc education.â âThe more stitches the less riches; the more stitches the less .â âThe introduction of Our Fordâs ïŹrst T-Model .â âIâve had it nearly three months.â âChosen as the opening date of the new era.â âEnding is better than mending; ending is better .â âThere was a thing, as Iâve said before, called Christianity.â âEnding is better than mending.â âThe ethics and philosophy of under-consumption .â http://www.idph.net IDPH 37 âI love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love .â âSo essential when there was under-production; but in an age of machines and the ïŹxation of nitrogen-positively a crime against society.â âHenry Foster gave it me.â âAll crosses had their tops cut and became Tâs. There was also a thing called God.â âItâs real morocco-surrogate.â âWe have the World State now. And Fordâs Day celebrations, and Community Sings, and Solidarity Services.â âFord, how I hate them!â Bernard Marx was thinking. âThere was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.â âLike meat, like so much meat.â âThere was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.â âDo ask Henry where he got it.â âBut they used to take morphia and cocaine.â âAnd what makes it worse, she tlainks of herself as meat.â âTwo thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized in A.P . 178.â âHe does look glum,â said the Assistant Predestinator, pointing at Bernard Marx. âSix years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug.â âLetâs bait him.â âEuphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.â âGlum, Marx, glum.â The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was that brute Henry Foster. âWhat you need is a gramme of soma.â âAll the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of
đ Soma and Social Control
đ Soma functions as the ultimate escape mechanism, offering citizens "holidays from reality" without consequences, reinforcing the regime's control through chemical contentment
đ€ Social conditioning creates rigid caste hierarchies where physical attributes determine worth, leaving individuals like Bernard Marx feeling alienated despite their Alpha status
đ Perpetual distraction through constant work, entertainment, and casual sex prevents meaningful reflection, as "old men have no time to sit down and think"
đ§ Mental excess creates isolation in a conformist society, as demonstrated by Helmholtz Watson's growing awareness of his individuality and unfulfilled creative potential
đ Human connection remains superficial in this world, with relationships reduced to casual physical encounters and conversations that avoid genuine emotional depth
đŁïž Language limitations frustrate those seeking deeper expression, as Helmholtz laments the impossibility of writing "piercingly" about trivial subjects in a society that avoids meaningful topics
their defects.â âFord, I should like to kill him!â But all he did was to say, âNo, thank you,â and fend off the proffered tube of tablets. âTake a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so mu- ch as a headache or a mythology.â âTake it,â insisted Henry Foster, âtake it.â http://www.idph.net 38 IDPH âStability was practically assured.â âOne cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments,â said the Assistant Predes- tinator citing a piece of homely hypnopĂŠdic wisdom. âIt only remained to conquer old age.â âDamn you, damn you!â shouted Bernard Marx. âHoity-toity.â âGonadal hormones, transfusion of young blood, magnesium salts .â âAnd do remember that a gramme is better than a damn.â They went out, laughing. âAll the physiological stigmata of old age have been abolished. And along with them, of course .â âDonât forget to ask him about that Malthusian belt,â said Fanny. âAlong with them all the old manâs mental peculiarities. Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime.â â. two rounds of Obstacle Golf to get through before dark. I must ïŹy.â âWork, play-at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking-thinking!â âIdiots, swine!â Bernard Marx was saying to himself, as he walked down the corridor to the lift. âNow-such is progress-the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think- or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time shoud yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they ïŹnd themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to .â âGo away, little girl,â shouted the D.H.C. angrily. âGo away, little boy! Canât you see that his fordshipâs busy? Go and do your erotic play somewhere else.â âSuffer little children,â said the Controller. Slowly, majestically, with a faint humming of machinery, the Conveyors moved forward, thirty-three centimters an hour. In the red darkness glinted innumera- ble rubies. http://www.idph.net Four THE LIFT was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, and Leni- naâs entry wars greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another, had spent a night with almost all of them. They were dear boys, she thought, as she returned their salutations. Charming boys! Still, she did wish that George Edzelâs ears werenât quite so big (perhaps heâd been given just a spot too much parathyroid at Metre 328?). And looking at Benito Hoover, she couldnât help remembering that he was really too hairy when he took his clothes off. Turning, with eyes a little saddened by the recollection, of Benitoâs curly black- ness, she saw in a corner the small thin body, the melancholy face of Bernard Marx. âBernard!â she stepped up to him. âI was looking for you.â Her voice rang clear above the hum of the mounting lift. The others looked round curiously. âI wanted to talk to you about our New Mexico plan.â Out of the tail of her eye she could see Benito Hoover gaping with astonishment. The gape annoyed her. âSurprised I shouldnât be begging to go with him again!â she said to herself. Then aloud, and more warmly than ever, âIâd simply love to come with you for a week in July,â she went on. (Anyhow, she was publicly proving her un- faithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought to be pleased, even though it was Bernard.) âThat is,â Lenina gave him her most deliciously signiïŹcant smile, âif you still want to have me.â Bernardâs pale face ïŹushed. âWhat on earth for?â she wondered, astonished, but at the same time touched by this strange tribute to her power. âHadnât we better talk about it somewhere else?â he stammered, looking hor- ribly uncomfortable. âAs though Iâd been saying something shocking,â thought Lenina. âHe couldnât look more upset if Iâd made a dirty joke-asked him who his mother was, or something like that.â 39 40 IDPH âI mean, with all these people about .â He was choked with confusion. Leninaâs laugh was frank and wholly unmalicious. âHow funny you are!â she said; and she quite genuinely did think him funny. âYouâll give me at least a weekâs warning, wonât you,â she went on in another tone. âI suppose we take the Blue PaciïŹc Rocket? Does it start from the Charing-T Tower? Or is it from Hampstead?â Before Bernard could answer, the lift came to a standstill. âRoof!â called a creaking voice. The liftman was a small simian creature, dressed in the black tunic of an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron. âRoof!â He ïŹung open the gates. The warm glory of afternoon sunlight made him start and blink his eyes. âOh, roof!â he repeated in a voice of rapture. He was as though suddenly and joyfully awakened from a dark annihilating stupor. âRoof!â He smiled up with a kind of doggily expectant adoration into the faces of his passengers. Talking and laughing together, they stepped out into the light. The liftman looked after them. âRoof?â he said once more, questioningly. Then a bell rang, and from the ceiling of the lift a loud speaker began, very softly and yet very imperiously, to issue its commands. âGo down,â it said, âgo down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go .â The liftman slammed the gates, touched a button and instantly dropped back into the droning twilight of the well, the twilight of his own habitual stupor. It was warm and bright on the roof. The summer afternoon was drowsy with the hum of passing helicopters; and the deeper drone of the rocket-planes has- tening, invisible, through the bright sky ïŹve or six miles overhead was like a caress on the soft air. Bernard Marx drew a deep breath. He looked up into the sky and round the blue horizon and ïŹnally down into Leninaâs face. âIsnât it beautiful!â His voice trembled a little. She smiled at him with an expression of the most sympathetic understanding. âSimply perfect for Obstacle Golf,â she answered rapturously. âAnd now I must ïŹy, Bernard. Henry gets cross if I keep him waiting. Let me know in good time about the date.â And waving her hand she ran away across the wide ïŹat roof towards the hangars. Bernard stood watching the retreating twinkle http://www.idph.net IDPH 41 of the white stockings, the sunburnt knees vivaciously bending and unbending again, again, and the softer rolling of those well-ïŹtted corduroy shorts beneath the bottle green jacket. His face wore an expression of pain. âI should say she was pretty,â said a loud and cheery voice just behind him. Bernard started and looked around. The chubby red face of Benito Hoover was beaming down at him-beaming with manifest cordiality. Benito was notori- ously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afïŹicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny. âPneumatic too. And how!â Then, in another tone: âBut, I say,â he went on, âyou do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma.â Diving into his right- hand trouser-pocket, Benito produced a phial. âOne cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy. But, I say!â Bernard had suddenly turned and rushed away. Benito stared after him. âWhat can be the matter with the fellow?â he won- dered, and, shaking his head, decided that the story about the alcohol having been put into the poor chapâs blood-surrogate must be true. âTouched his brain, I suppose.â He put away the soma bottle, and taking out a packet of sex-hormone chewing- gum, stuffed a plug into his cheek and walked slowly away towards the han- gars, ruminating. Henry Foster had had his machine wheeled out of its lock-up and, when Lenina arrived, was already seated in the cockpit, waiting. âFour minutes late,â was all his comment, as she climbed in beside him. He started the engines and threw the helicopter screws into gear. The machine shot vertically into the air. Henry accelerated; the humming of the propeller shrilled from hornet to wasp, from wasp to mosquito; the speedometer showed that they were rising at the best part of two kilometres a minute. London di- minished beneath them. The huge table-topped buildings were no more, in a few seconds, than a bed of geometrical mushrooms sprouting from the green of park and garden. In the midst of them, thin- stalked, a taller, slenderer fungus, the Charing-T Tower lifted towards the sky a disk of shining concrete. Like the vague torsos of fabulous athletes, huge ïŹeshy clouds lolled on the blue air above their heads. Out of one of them suddenly dropped a small scarlet insect, buzzing as it fell. âThereâs the Red Rocket,â said Henry, âjust come in from New York.â Looking at his watch. âSeven minutes behind time,â he added, and shook his head. http://www.idph.net 42 IDPH âThese Atlantic services-theyâre really scandalously unpunctual.â He took his foot off the accelerator. The humming of the screws overhead drop- ped an octave and a half, back through wasp and hornet to bumble bee, to cockchafer, to stag-beetle. The upward rush of the machine slackened off; a mo- ment later they were hanging motionless in the air. Henry pushed at a lever; there was a click. Slowly at ïŹrst, then faster and faster, till it was a circular mist before their eyes, the propeller in front of them began to revolve. The wind of a horizontal speed whistled ever more shrilly in the stays. Henry kept his eye on the revolution-counter; when the needle touched the twelve hundred mark, he threw the helicopter screws out of gear. The machine had enough forward momentum to be able to ïŹy on its planes. Lenina looked down through the window in the ïŹoor between her feet. They were ïŹying over the six kilometre zone of park-land that separated Central Lon- don from its ïŹrst ring of satellite suburbs. The green was maggoty with fore- shortened life. Forests of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy towers gleamed between the trees. Near Shepherdâs Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann-surface tennis. A double row of Escalator Fives Courts lined the main road from Notting Hill to Willesden. In the Ealing stadium a Delta gymnastic display and community sing was in progress. âWhat a hideous colour khaki is,â remarked Lenina, voicing the hypnopĂŠdic prejudices of her caste. The buildings of the Hounslow Feely Studio covered seven and a half hecta- res. Near them a black and khaki army of labourers was busy revitrifying the surface of the Great West Road. One of the huge travelling crucibles was being tapped as they ïŹew over. The molten stone poured out in a stream of dazzling incandescence across the road, the asbestos rollers came and went; at the tail of an insulated watering cart the steam rose in white clouds. At Brentford the Television Corporationâs factory was like a small town. âThey must be changing the shift,â said Lenina. Like aphides and ants, the leaf-green Gamma girls, the black Semi-Morons swarmed round the entrances, or stood in queues to take their places in the monorail tram-cars. Mulberry-coloured Beta-Minuses came and went among the crowd. The roof of the main building was alive with the alighting and de- parture of helicopters. âMy word,â said Lenina, âIâm glad Iâm not a Gamma.â Ten minutes later they were at Stoke Poges and had started their ïŹrst round of Obstacle Golf. http://www.idph.net IDPH 43 § 2 WITH eyes for the most part downcast and, if ever they lighted on a fellow creature, at once and furtively averted, Bernard hastened across the roof. He was like a man pursued, but pursued by enemies he does not wish to see, lest they should seem more hostile even than he had supposed, and he himself be made to feel guiltier and even more helplessly alone. âThat horrible Benito Hoover!â And yet the man had meant well enough. Whi- ch only made it, in a way, much worse. Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly. Even Lenina was making him suffer. He remembered those weeks of timid indecision, during which he had looked and longed and despaired of ever having the courage to ask her. Dared he face the risk of being humiliated by a contemptuous refusal? But if she were to say yes, what rapture! Well, now she had said it and he was still wretched- wretched that she should have thought it such a perfect afternoon for Obstacle Golf, that she should have trotted away to join Henry Foster, that she should have found him funny for not wanting to talk of their most private affairs in public. Wret- ched, in a word, because she had behaved as any healthy and virtuous English girl ought to behave and not in some other, abnormal, extraordinary way. He opened the door of his lock-up and called to a lounging couple of Delta- Mi- nus attendants to come and push his machine out on to the roof. The hangars were staffed by a single Bokanovsky Group, and the men were twins, identi- cally small, black and hideous. Bernard gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority. To have dealings with members of the lower castes was always, for Bernard, a most distressing experience. For whatever the cause (and the current gossip about the alcohol in his blood-surrogate may very likely-for ac- cidents will happen-have been true) Bernardâs physique as hardly better than that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion. Contact with members of he lower castes always reminded him painfully of this physical inadequacy. âI am I, and wish I wasnâtâ; his self-consciousness was acute and stressing. Each time he found himself looking on the level, instead of downward, into a Deltaâs face, he felt humiliated. Would the creature treat him with the respect due to his caste? The question haunted him. Not without reason. For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Indeed, a faint hypnopĂŠdic prejudice in favour of size was universal. Hence the laughter of the women to whom he made proposals, the practical joking of his equals among the men. The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensiïŹed the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. http://www.idph.net 44 IDPH A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self- consciously on his dignity. How bit- terly he envied men like Henry Foster and Benito Hoover! Men who never had to shout at an Epsilon to get an order obeyed; men who took their position for granted; men who moved through the caste system as a ïŹsh through water-so utterly at home as to be unaware either of themselves or of the beneïŹcent and comfortable element in which they had their being. Slackly, it seemed to him, and with reluctance, the twin attendants wheeled his plane out on the roof. âHurry up!â said Bernard irritably. One of them glanced at him. Was that a kind of bestial derision that he detected in those blank grey eyes? âHurry up!â he shouted more loudly, and there was an ugly rasp in his voice. He climbed into the plane and, a minute later, was ïŹying southwards, towards the river. The various Bureaux of Propaganda and the College of Emotional Engineering were housed in a single sixty-story building in Fleet Street. In the basement and on the low ïŹoors were the presses and ofïŹces of the three great Lodon newspapers-The Hourly Radio, an upper-caste sheet, the pale green Gamma Gazette, and, on khaki paper and in words exclusively of one syllable, The Delta Mirror. Then came the Bureaux of Propaganda by Television, by Fee- ling Picture, and by Synthetic Voice and Music respectively-twenty-two ïŹoors of them. Above were the search laboratories and the padded rooms in which Sound-Track Writers and Synthetic Composers did the delicate work. The top eighteen ïŹoors were occupied the College of Emotional Engineering. Bernard landed on the roof of Propaganda House and stepped out. âRing down to Mr. Helmholtz Watson,â he ordered the Gamma-Plus porter, âand tell him that Mr. Bernard Marx is waiting for him on the roof.â He sat down and lit a cigarette. Helmholtz Watson was writing when the message came down. âTell him Iâm coming at once,â he said and hung up the receiver. Then, turning to his secretary, âIâll leave you to put my things away,â he went on in the sa- me ofïŹcial and impersonal tone; and, ignoring her lustrous smile, got up and walked briskly to the door. He was a powerfully built man, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, massive, and yet quick in his movements, springy and agile. The round strong pillar of his neck supported a beautifully shaped head. His hair was dark and curly, his features strongly marked. In a forcible emphatic way, he was handsome and looked, as his secretety was never tired of repeating, every centimetre an Alpha http://www.idph.net IDPH 45 Plus. By profession he was a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing) and the intervals of his educational activities, a wor- king Emotional Engineer. He wrote regularly for The Hourly Radio, composed feely scenarios, and had the happiest knack for slogans and hypnopĂŠdic rhy- mes. âAble,â was the verdict of his superiors. âPerhaps, (and they would shake their heads, would signiïŹcantly lower their voices) âa little too able.â Yes, a little too able; they were right. A mental excess had produced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those which, in Bernard Marx, were the result of a physical defect. Too little bone and brawn had isolated Bernard from his fellow men, and the sense of this apartness, being, by all the current standards, a mental excess, became in its turn a cause of wider separation. That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowled- ge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable lover (it was said that he had had six hundred and forty different girls in under four years), this admirable committee man and best mixer had realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what? That was the problem which Bernard had come to discuss with him-or rather, since it was always Helmholtz who did all the talking, to listen to his friend discussing, yet once more. Three charming girls from the Bureau of Propaganda by Synthetic Voice way- laid him as he stepped out of the lift. âOh, Helmholtz, darling, do come and have a picnic supper with us on Exmo- or.â They clung round him imploringly. He shook his head, he pushed his way through them. âNo, no.â âWeâre not inviting any other man.â But Helmholtz remained unshaken even by this delightful promise. âNo,â he repeated, âIâm busy.â And he held resolutely on his course. The girls trailed after him. It was not till he had actually climbed into Bernardâs plane and slam- med the door that they gave up pursuit. Not without reproaches. âThese women!â he said, as the machine rose into the air. âThese women!â And he shook his head, he frowned. âToo awful,â Bernard hypocritically agreed, wishing, as he spoke the words, that he could have as many girls as Helmholtz http://www.idph.net 46 IDPH did, and with as little trouble. He was seized with a sudden urgent need to boast. âIâm taking Lenina Crowne to New Mexico with me,â he said in a tone as casual as he could make it. âAre you?â said Helmholtz, with a total absence of interest. Then after a little pause, âThis last week or two,â he went on, âIâve been cutting all my commit- tees and all my girls. You canât imagine what a hullabaloo theyâve been making about it at the College. Still, itâs been worth it, I think. The effects .â He hesita- ted. âWell, theyâre odd, theyâre very odd.â A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artiïŹcial impotence of asceticism. The rest of the short ïŹight was accomplished in silence. When they had arrived and were comfortably stretched out on the pneumatic sofas in Bernardâs room, Helmholtz began again. Speaking very slowly, âDid you ever feel,â he asked, âas though you had so- mething inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you arenât using-you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?â He looked at Bernard questioningly. âYou mean all the emotions one might be feeling if things were different?â Helmholtz shook his head. âNot quite. Iâm thinking of a queer feeling I someti- mes get, a feeling that Iâve got something important to say and the power to say it-only I donât know what it is, and I canât make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing. Or else something else to write about .â He was silent; then, âYou see,â he went on at last, âIâm pretty good at inventing phrases-you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though youâd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though theyâre about something hypnopĂŠdically obvious. But that doesnât seem enough. Itâs not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.â âBut your things are good, Helmholtz.â âOh, as far as they go.â Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. âBut they go such a little way. They arenât important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things oneâs expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly-theyâll go through anything. You read and youâre pierced. Thatâs one of the things I try to teach my students-how to write piercingly. But what on http://www.idph.net IDPH 47 earthâs the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing-you know, like the very hardest X-rays- when youâre writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? Thatâs what it ïŹnally boils down to. I try and I try .â âHush!â said Bernard suddenly, and lifted a warning ïŹnger; they
đ Dystopian Social Control
đ€ Social conditioning shapes every aspect of this society, from Bernard's insecurity to Lenina's automatic contraceptive habits, creating citizens who reflexively recite "everybody's happy now"
đ§ Hypnopaedia and rigid caste system (Alphas through Epsilons) maintain social order through repeated mantras like "we can't do without anyone" that become deeply internalized beliefs
đ Solidarity Service rituals use đ soma, music, and choreographed group activities to manufacture artificial community, dissolving individual identity into a collective "Greater Being"
đïž The landscape itself reinforces controlâfrom the phosphorus-recovering crematorium to the Westminster Abbey Cabaretâblending technology, consumption, and death into a seamless experience
đ Despite elaborate systems of manufactured happiness, characters like Bernard experience profound alienation and emptiness, revealing the hollow core beneath the society's perfect surface
listened. âI believe thereâs somebody at the door,â he whispered. Helmholtz got up, tiptoed across the room, and with a sharp quick movement ïŹung the door wide open. There was, of course, nobody there. âIâm sorry,â said Bernard, feelling and looking uncomfortably foolish. âI sup- pose Iâve got things on my nerves a bit. When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.â He passed his hand across his eyes, he sighed, his voice became plaintive. He was justifying himself. âIf you knew what Iâd had to put up with recently,â he said almost tearfully-and the uprush of his self-pity was like a fountain sud- denly released. âIf you only knew!â Helmholtz Watson listened with a certain sense of discomfort. âPoor little Ber- nard!â he said to himself. But at the same time he felt rather ashamed for his friend. He wished Bernard would show a little more pride. http://www.idph.net 48 IDPH http://www.idph.net Five BY EIGHT OâCLOCK the light was failing. The loud speaker in the tower of the Stoke Poges Club House began, in a more than human tenor, to announce the closing of the courses. Lenina and Henry abandoned their game and walked back towards the Club. From the grounds of the Internal and External Secretion Trust came the lowing of those thousands of cattle which provided, with their hormones and their milk, the raw materials for the great factory at Farnham Royal. An incessant buzzing of helicopters ïŹlled the twilight. Every two and a half minutes a bell and the screech of whistles announced the departure of one of the light monorail trains which carried the lower caste golfers back from their separate course to the metropolis. Lenina and Henry climbed into their machine and started off. At eight hundred feet Henry slowed down the helicopter screws, and they hung for a minute or two poised above the fading landscape. The forest of Burnham Beeches stret- ched like a great pool of darkness towards the bright shore of the western sky. Crimson at the horizon, the last of the sunset faded, through orange, upwards into yellow and a pale watery green. Northwards, beyond and above the trees, the Internal and External Secretions factory glared with a ïŹerce electric brilli- ance from every window of its twenty stories. Beneath them lay the buildings of the Golf Club-the huge Lower Caste barracks and, on the other side of a dividing wall, the smaller houses reserved for Alpha and Beta members. The approaches to the monorail station were black with the ant-like pullulation of lower-caste activity. From under the glass vault a lighted train shot out into the open. Following its southeasterly course across the dark plain their eyes were drawn to the majestic buildings of the Slough Crematorium. For the safety of night-ïŹying planes, its four tall chimneys were ïŹood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals. It was a landmark. âWhy do the smoke-stacks have those things like balconies around them?â en- quired Lenina. 49 50 IDPH âPhosphorus recovery,â explained Henry telegraphically. âOn their way up the chimney the gases go through four separate treatments. P2O5 used to go right out of circulation every time they cremated some one. Now they recover over ninety-eight per cent of it. More than a kilo and a half per adult corpse. Which makes the best part of four hundred tons of phosphorus every year from England alone.â Henry spoke with a happy pride, rejoicing whole-heartedly in the achievement, as though it had been his own. âFine to think we can go on being socially useful even after weâre dead. Making plants grow.â Lenina, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away and was looking perpendicu- larly downwards at the monorail station. âFine,â she agreed. âBut queer that Alphas and Betas wonât make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas and Epsilons down there.â âAll men are physico-chemically equal,â said Henry sententiously. âBesides, even Epsilons perform indispensable services.â âEven an Epsilon .â Lenina suddenly remembered an occasion when, as a little girl at school, she had woken up in the middle of the night and become aware, for the ïŹrst time, of the whispering that had haunted all her sleeps. She saw again the beam of moonlight, the row of small white beds; heard once more the soft, soft voice that said (the words were there, unforgotten, unforgettable after so many night-long repetitions): âEvery one works for every one else. We canât do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldnât do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else. We canât do without any one .â Lenina remembered her ïŹrst shock of fear and surprise; her speculations through half a wakeful hour; and then, under the inïŹuence of those endless repetitions, the gradual soothing of her mind, the soothing, the smoothing, the stealthy creeping of sleep.. âI suppose Epsilons donât really mind being Epsilons,â she said aloud. âOf course they donât. How can they? They donât know what itâs like being anything else. Weâd mind, of course. But then weâve been differently conditio- ned. Besides, we start with a different heredity.â âIâm glad Iâm not an Epsilon,â said Lenina, with conviction. âAnd if you were an Epsilon,â said Henry, âyour conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you werenât a Beta or an Alpha.â He put his forward propeller into gear and headed the machine towards London. Behind them, in the west, the crimson and orange were almost faded; a dark bank of cloud had crept into the zenith. As they ïŹew over the crematorium, the plane shot upwards on the column of hot air rising from the chimneys, only to fall as suddenly when it passed into the descending chill beyond. âWhat a marvellous switchback!â Lenina laughed delightedly. http://www.idph.net IDPH 51 But Henryâs tone was almost, for a moment, melancholy. âDo you know what that switchback was?â he said. âIt was some human being ïŹnally and deïŹnitely disappearing. Going up in a squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who it was-a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon. .â He sighed. Then, in a resolutely cheerful voice, âAnyhow,â he concluded, âthereâs one thing we can be certain of; whoever he may have been, he was happy when he was alive. Everybodyâs happy now.â âYes, everybodyâs happy now,â echoed Lenina. They had heard the words re- peated a hundred and ïŹfty times every night for twelve years. Landing on the roof of Henryâs forty-story apartment house in Westminster, they went straight down to the dining-hall. There, in a loud and cheerful com- pany, they ate an excellent meal. Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three. At twenty past nine they wal- ked across the street to the newly opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret. It was a night almost without clouds, moonless and starry; but of this on the who- le depressing fact Lenina and Henry were fortunately unaware. The electric sky-signs effectively shut off the outer darkness. âCALVIN STOPES AND HIS SIXTEEN SEXOPHONISTS.â From the façade of the new Abbey the giant let- ters invitingly glared. âLONDONâS FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC.â They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with the scent of ambergris and sandalwood. On the domed ceiling of the hall, the colour or- gan had momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing an old favourite: âThere ainât no Bottle in all the world like that de- ar little Bottle of mine.â Four hundred couples were ïŹve-stepping round the polished ïŹoor. Lenina and Henry were soon the four hundred and ïŹrst. The sa- xophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon, moaned in the alto and tenor registers as though the little death were upon them. Rich with a wealth of harmonics, their tremulous chorus mounted towards a climax, louder and ever louder-until at last, with a wave of his hand, the conductor let loose the ïŹ- nal shattering note of ether-music and blew the sixteen merely human blowers clean out of existence. Thunder in A ïŹat major. And then, in all but silence, in all but darkness, there followed a gradual deturgescence, a diminuendo sliding gradually, through quarter tones, down, down to a faintly whispered dominant chord that lingered on (while the ïŹve-four rhythms still pulsed below) char- ging the darkened seconds with an intense expectancy. And at last expectancy was fulïŹlled. There was a sudden explosive sunrise, and simultaneously, the Sixteen burst into song: âBottle of mine, itâs you Iâve always wanted! Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted? http://www.idph.net 52 IDPH Skies are blue inside of you, The weatherâs always ïŹne; For There ainât no Bottle in all the world Like that dear little Bottle of mine.â Five-stepping with the other four hundred round and round Westminster Ab- bey, Lenina and Henry were yet dancing in another world-the warm, the richly coloured, the inïŹnitely friendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good- looking, how delightfully amusing every one was! âBottle of mine, itâs you Iâve always wanted .â But Lenina and Henry had what they wanted. They were inside, here and now-safely inside with the ïŹne weather, the perennially blue sky. And when, exhausted, the Sixteen had laid by their saxophones and the Synthetic Music apparatus was producing the very latest in slow Malthusian Blues, they might have been twin embryos gently rocking together on the wa- ves of a bottled ocean of blood-surrogate. âGood-night, dear friends. Good-night, dear friends.â The loud speakers veiled their commands in a genial and musical politeness. âGood-night, dear friends .â Obediently, with all the others, Lenina and Henry left the building. The de- pressing stars had travelled quite some way across the heavens. But though the separating screen of the sky-signs had now to a great extent dissolved, the two young people still retained their happy ignorance of the night. Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds. Bottled, they crossed the street; bottled, they took the lift up to Henryâs room on the twenty-eighth ïŹoor. And yet, bottled as she was, and in spite of that second gramme of soma, Lenina did not forget to take all the contraceptive precautions prescribed by the regulations. Years of intensive hypnopĂŠdia and, from twelve to seventeen, Malthusian drill three times a week had made the taking of these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as blinking. âOh, and that reminds me,â she said, as she came back from the bathroom, âFanny Crowne wants to know where you found that lovely green morocco- surrogate cartridge belt you gave me.â http://www.idph.net IDPH 53 § 2 ALTERNATE Thursdays were Bernardâs Solidarity Service days. After an early dinner at the Aphroditzeum (to which Helrnholtz had recently been elected under Rule Two) he took leave of his friend and, hailing a taxi on the roof told the man to ïŹy to the Fordson Community Singery. The machine rose a cou- ple of hundred metres, then headed eastwards, and as it turned, there before Bernardâs eyes, gigantically beautiful, was the Singery. Flood- lighted, its three hundred and twenty metres of white Carrara-surrogate gleamed with a snowy incandescence over Ludgate Hill; at each of the four corners of its helicopter platform an immense T shone crimson against the night, and from the mouths of twenty-four vast golden trumpets rumbled a solemn synthetic music. âDamn, Iâm late,â Bernard said to himself as he ïŹrst caught sight of Big Henry, the Singery clock. And sure enough, as he was paying off his cab, Big Henry sounded the hour. âFord,â sang out an immense bass voice from all the golden trumpets. âFord, Ford, Ford .â Nine times. Bernard ran for the lift. The great auditorium for Fordâs Day celebrations and other massed Commu- nity Sings was at the bottom of the building. Above it, a hundred to each ïŹoor, were the seven thousand rooms used by Solidarity Groups for their fortnight services. Bernard dropped down to ïŹoor thirty-three, hurried along the cor- ridor, stood hesitating for a moment outside Room 3210, then, having wound himself up, opened the door and walked in. Thank Ford! he was not the last. Three chairs of the twelve arranged round the circular table were still unoccupied. He slipped into the nearest of them as inconspicuously as he could and prepared to frown at the yet later comers whenever they should arrive. Turning towards him, âWhat were you playing this afternoon?â the girl on his left enquired. âObstacle, or Electro-magnetic?â Bernard looked at her (Ford! it was Morgana Rothschild) and blushingly had to admit that he had been playing neither. Morgana stared at him with astonish- ment. There was an awkward silence. Then pointedly she turned away and addressed herself to the more sporting man on her left. âA good beginning for a Solidarity Service,â thought Bernard miserably, and foresaw for himself yet another failure to achieve atonement. If only he had given himself time to look around instead of scuttling for the nearest chair! He could have sat between FiïŹ Bradlaugh and Joanna Diesel. Instead of which he had gone and blindly planted himself next to Morgana. Morgana! Ford! Those black eyebrows of hers-that eyebrow, rather-for they met above the nose. Ford! http://www.idph.net 54 IDPH And on his right was Clara Deterding. True, Claraâs eyebrows didnât meet. But she was really too pneumatic. Whereas FiïŹ and Joanna were absolutely right. Plump, blonde, not too large. And it was that great lout, Tom Kawaguchi, who now took the seat between them. The last arrival was Sarojini Engels. âYouâre late,â said the President of the Group severely. âDonât let it happen again.â Sarojini apologized and slid into her place between Jim Bokanovsky and Her- bert Bakunin. The group was now complete, the solidarity circle perfect and without ïŹaw. Man, woman, man, in a ring of endless alternation round the table. Twelve of them ready to be made one, waiting to come together, to be fused, to lose their twelve separate identities in a larger being. The President stood up, made the sign of the T and, switching on the synthe- tic music, let loose the soft indefatigable beating of drums and a choir of instruments-near-wind and super-string-that plangently repeated and repea- ted the brief and unescapably haunting melody of the ïŹrst Solidarity Hymn. Again, again-and it was not the ear that heard the pulsing rhythm, it was the midriff; the wail and clang of those recurring harmonies haunted, not the mind, but the yearning bowels of compassion. The President made another sign of the T and sat down. The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, âI drink to my annihilation,â twelve times quaffed. Then to the accompaniment of the synthetic orchestra the First Solidarity Hymn was sung. âFord, 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.â Twelve yearning stanzas. And then the loving cup was passed a second time. âI drink to the Greater Beingâ was now the formula. All drank. Tirelessly the music played. The drums beat. The crying and clashing of the harmonies were an obsession in the melted bowels. The Second Solidarity Hymn was sung. âCome, Greater Being, Social Friend, Annihilating Twelve-in-One! We long to die, for when we end, Our larger life has but begun.â http://www.idph.net IDPH 55 Again twelve stanzas. By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes sho- ne, cheeks were ïŹushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted. When Morgana Rothschild turned and beamed at him, he did his best to beam back. But the eyebrow, that black two-in-one-alas, it was still there; he couldnât ignore it, couldnât, however hard he tried. The melting hadnât gone far enough. Perhaps if he had been sitting between FiïŹ and Joanna. For the third time the loving cup went round; âI drink to the imminence of His Coming,â said Mor- gana Rothschild, whose turn it happened to be to initiate the circular rite. Her tone was loud, exultant. She drank and passed the cup to Bernard. âI drink to the imminence of His Coming,â he repeated, with a sincere attempt to feel that the coming was imminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunt him, and the Coming, so far as he was concerned, was horribly remote. He drank and handed the cup to Clara Deterding. âItâll be a failure again,â he said to himself. âI know it will.â But he went on doing his best to beam. The loving cup had made its circuit. Lifting his hand, the President gave a signal; the chorus broke out into the third Solidarity Hymn. âFeel how the Greater Being comes! Rejoice and, in rejoicings, die! Melt in the music of the drums! For I am you and you are I.â As verse succeeded verse the voices thrilled with an ever intenser excitement. The sense of the Comingâs imminence was like an electric tension in the air. The President switched off the music and, with the ïŹnal note of the ïŹnal stanza, there was absolute silence-the silence of stretched expectancy, quivering and creeping with a galvanic life. The President reached out his hand; and sud- denly a Voice, a deep strong Voice, more musical than any merely human voice, richer, warmer, more vibrant with love and yearning and compassion, a won- derful, mysterious, supernatural Voice spoke from above their heads. Very slo- wly, âOh, Ford, Ford, Ford,â it said diminishingly and on a descending scale. A sensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from the solar plexus to every extremity of the bodies of those who listened; tears came into their eyes; their hearts, their bowels seemed to move within them, as though with an indepen- dent life. âFord!â they were melting, âFord!â dissolved, dissolved. Then, in another tone, suddenly, startlingly. âListen!â trumpeted the voice. âListen!â They listened. After a pause, sunk to a whisper, but a whisper, somehow, more penetrating than the loudest cry. âThe feet of the Greater Being,â it went on, and repeated the words: âThe feet of the Greater Being.â The whisper almost expi- red. âThe feet of the Greater Being are on the stairs.â And once more there was silence; and the expectancy, momentarily relaxed, was stretched again, tauter, http://www.idph.net 56 IDPH tauter, almost to the tearing point. The feet of the Greater Being-oh, they heard thern, they heard them, coming softlydown the stairs, coming nearer and nearer down the invisible stairs. The feet of the Greater Being. And suddenly the tea- ring point was reached. Her eyes staring, her lips parted. Morgana Rothschild sprang to her feet. âI hear him,â she cried. âI hear him.â âHeâs coming,â shouted Sarojini Engels. âYes, heâs coming, I hear him.â FiïŹ Bradlaugh and Tom Kawaguchi rose simul- taneously to their feet. âOh, oh, oh!â Joanna inarticulately testiïŹed. âHeâs coming!â yelled Jim Bokanovsky. The President leaned forward and, with a touch, released a delirium of cymbals and blown brass, a fever of tom-tomming. âOh, heâs coming!â screamed Clara Deterding. âAie!â and it was as though she were having her throat cut. Feeling that it was time for him to do something, Bernard also jumped up and shouted: âI hear him; Heâs coming.â But it wasnât true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming. Nobody-in spite of the music, in spite of the mounting excitement. But he waved his arms, he shouted with the best of them; and when the others began to jig and stamp and shufïŹe, he also jigged and shufïŹed. Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each with hands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round, shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music with their feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on the buttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding. Twelve as one, twelve as one. âI hear Him, I hear Him coming.â The music quickened; faster beat the feet, faster, faster fell the rhyth- mic hands. And all at once a great synthetic bass boomed out the words which announced the approaching atonement and ïŹnal consummation of solidarity, the coming of the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the Greater Being. âOrgy- porgy,â it sang, while the tom-toms continued to beat their feverish tattoo: âOrgy-porgy, Ford and fun, Kiss the girls and make them One. Boys at 0ne with girls at peace; Orgy-porgy gives release.â âOrgy-porgy,â the dancers caught up the liturgical refrain, âOrgy-porgy, Ford http://www.idph.net IDPH 57 and fun, kiss the girls .â And as they sang, the lights began slowly to fade-to fade and at the same time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. âOrgy- porgy .â In their blood-coloured and foetal darkness the dancers continued for a while to circu- late, to beat and beat out the indefatigable rhythm. âOrgy-porgy .â Then the circle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches whi- ch surrounded-circle enclosing circle-the table and its planetary chairs. âOrgy- porgy .â Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed; in the red twilight it was as though some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supine dancers. They were standing on the roof; Big Henry had just sung eleven. The night was calm and warm. âWasnât it wonderful?â said FiïŹ Bradlaugh. âWasnât it simply wonderful?â She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement-for to be excited is still to be unsatisïŹed. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace. For the Solidarity Service had given as well as taken, drawn off only to replenish. She was full, she was made perfect, she was still more than merely herself. âDidnât you think it was wonderful?â she insisted, looking into Bernardâs face with those supernaturally shining eyes. âYes, I thought it was wonderful,â he lied and looked away; the sight of her transïŹgured face was at once an accusation and an ironical reminder of his own separateness. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the servi- ce began-more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead sati- ety. Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being; alone even in Morganaâs embrace-much more alone, indeed, more hope- lessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensiïŹed to the pitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault. âQuite wonderful,â he repeated; but the only thing he could think of was Morganaâs eyebrow. http://www.idph.net 58 IDPH http://www.idph.net Six ODD, ODD, odd, was Leninaâs verdict on Bernard Marx. So odd, indeed, that in the course of the succeeding weeks she had wondered more than once whether she shouldnât change her mind about the New Mexico holiday, and go inste- ad to the North Pole with Benito Hoover. The trouble was that she knew the North Pole, had been there with George Edzel only last summer, and what was more, found it pretty grim. Nothing to do, and the hotel too hopelessly old- fashioned-no television laid on in the bedrooms, no scent organ, only the most putrid synthetic music, and
đ Brave New Dystopia
đ€ Conditioning shapes society's values, creating a world where "everyone's happy nowadays" through chemical pacification and programmed behaviors that prioritize immediate pleasure over authentic connection
đ§ Bernard Marx, an Alpha-Plus psychologist, rebels against this system by seeking privacy, rejecting soma, and craving genuine emotionâmaking him a "rhinoceros" who "doesn't respond properly to conditioning"
đ The soma drug represents society's ultimate control mechanism, offering instant happiness while eliminating meaningful experiencesâ"a gramme is always better than a damn" becomes the mantra for avoiding discomfort
đïž The Savage Reservation stands as the forbidden alternative to this controlled existence, a place where people still experience natural birth and emotions, separated by electric fences from the "civilized" world
đ The tension between conformity and individuality drives the narrative, with Bernard's desire "to be an adult all the time" directly challenging a society that demands emotional infantilism from its members
đ Human connection becomes impossible when people are viewed as commoditiesâBernard sees Lenina as "meat" while she measures her worth through being "pneumatic," revealing how dehumanization pervades even intimate relationships
đïž Malpais Reservation presents a jarring cultural contrast where "civilization meets savagery" through a physical border that separates the sterile, conditioned world from an indigenous community preserving ancient traditions
đ§ The sight of natural aging horrifies Lenina, who comes from a society where people are artificially maintained in perpetual youth through "balanced secretions" and "transfusions of young blood"
đ A religious ceremony featuring drums, snake handling, and ritual flagellation reveals profound cultural differences in spirituality, pain tolerance, and community values that deeply disturb the soma-dependent visitors
đ Soma dependency emerges as a crucial coping mechanism for the "civilized" visitors who become distressed without their chemical comfort when confronted with natural human conditions they've been conditioned to find repulsive
đ€ The appearance of a mixed-heritage stranger with "straw-colored hair" and "pale blue eyes" but indigenous dress creates a mysterious bridge between the two worlds, hinting at deeper connections yet to be revealed
We can only guess.â âYou donât say so.â âMy dear young lady, I do say so.â http://www.idph.net IDPH 69 Six times twenty-four-no, it would be nearer six times thirty-six. Bernard was pale and trembling with impatience. But inexorably the booming continued. â. about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds. absolute savages. our inspec- tors occasionally visit. otherwise, no communication whatever with the civili- zed world. still preserve their repulsive habits and customs. marriage, if you know what that is, my dear young lady; families. no conditioning. monstrous superstitions. Christianity and totemism and ancestor worship. extinct langua- ges, such as Zuñi and Spanish and Athapascan. pumas, porcupines and other ferocious animals. infectious diseases. priests. venomous lizards .â âYou donât say so?â They got away at last. Bernard dashed to the telephone. Quick, quick; but it took him nearly three minutes to get on to Helmholtz Watson. âWe might be among the savages already,â he complained. âDamned incompetence!â âHave a gramme,â suggested Lenina. He refused, preferring his anger. And at last, thank Ford, he was through and, yes, it was Helmholtz; Helmholtz, to whom he explained what had happened, and who promised to go round at once, at once, and turn off the tap, yes, at once, but took this opportunity to tell him what the D.H.C. had said, in public, yesterday evening. âWhat? Heâs looking out for some one to take my place?â Bernardâs voice was agonized. âSo itâs actually decided? Did he mention Iceland? You say he did? Ford! Iceland .â He hung up the receiver and turned back to Lenina. His face was pale, his expression utterly dejected. âWhatâs the matter?â she asked. âThe matter?â He dropped heavily into a chair. âIâm going to be sent to Ice- land.â Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected (soma- less and with nothing but his own inward resources to rely on) to some great tri- al, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for afïŹiction. As recently as a week ago, in the Directorâs ofïŹce, he had imagined himself courageously resisting, stoically accepting suffering without a word. The Directorâs threats had actually elated him, made him feel larger than life. But that, as he now realized, was because he had not taken the threats quite seriously, he had not believed that, when it came to the point, the D.H.C. would ever do anything. Now that it looked as though the threats were really to be fulïŹlled, Bernard was appalled. Of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage, not a trace was left. He raged against himself-what a fool!-against the Director-how unfair not to http://www.idph.net 70 IDPH give him that other chance, that other chance which, he now had no doubt at all, he had always intended to take. And Iceland, Iceland. Lenina shook her head. âWas and will make me ill,â she qUoted, âI take a gramme and only am.â In the end she persuaded him to swallow four tablets of soma. Five minutes la- ter roots and fruits were abolished; the ïŹower of the present rosily blossomed. A message from the porter announced that, at the Wardenâs orders, a Reserva- tion Guard had come round with a plane and was waiting on the roof of the hotel. They went up at once. An octoroon in Gamma-green uniform saluted and proceeded to recite the morningâs programme. A birdâs-eye view of ten or a dozen of the principal pueblos, then a landing for lunch in the valley of Malpais. The rest-house was comfortable there, and up at the pueblo the savages would probably be celebrating their summer festival. It would be the best place to spend the night. They took their seats in the plane and set off. Ten minutes later they we- re crossing the frontier that separated civilization from savagery. Uphill and down, across the deserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violet depth of canyons, over crag and peak and table-topped mesa, the fence marched on and on, irresistibly the straight line, the geometrical symbol of triumphant human purpose. And at its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still un- rotted carcase dark on the tawny ground marked the place where deer or steer, puma or porcupine or coyote, or the greedy turkey buzzards drawn down by the whiff of carrion and fulminated as though by a poetic justice, had come too close to the destroying wires. âThey never learn,â said the green-uniformed pilot, pointing down at the ske- letons on the ground below them. âAnd they never will learn,â he added and laughed, as though he had somehow scored a personal triumph over the elec- trocuted animals. Bernard also laughed; after two grammes of soma the joke seemed, for some reason, good. Laughed and then, almost immediately, dropped off to sleep, and sleeping was carried over Taos and Tesuque; over Nambe and Picuris and Pojoaque, over Sia and Cochiti, over Laguna and Acoma and the Enchanted Mesa, over Zuñi and Cibola and Ojo Caliente, and woke at last to ïŹnd the ma- chine standing on the ground, Lenina carrying the suit-cases into a small square house, and the Gamma-green octoroon talking incomprehensibly with a young Indian. âMalpais,â explained the pilot, as Bernard stepped out. âThis is the rest- house. And thereâs a dance this afternoon at the pueblo. Heâll take you there.â He poin- ted to the sullen young savage. âFunny, I expect.â He grinned. âEverything http://www.idph.net IDPH 71 they do is funny.â And with that he climbed into the plane and started up the engines. âBack to-morrow. And remember,â he added reassuringly to Le- nina, âtheyâre perfectly tame; savages wonât do you any harm. Theyâve got enough experience of gas bombs to know that they mustnât play any tricks.â Still laughing, he threw the helicopter screws into gear, accelerated, and was gone. http://www.idph.net 72 IDPH http://www.idph.net Seven THE MESA was like a ship becalmed in a strait of lion-coloured dust. The channel wound between precipitous banks, and slanting from one wall to the other across the valley ran a streak of green-the river and its ïŹelds. On the prow of that stone ship in the centre of the strait, and seemingly a part of it, a shaped and geometrical outcrop of the naked rock, stood the pueblo of Malpais. Block above block, each story smaller than the one below, the tall houses rose like stepped and amputated pyramids into the blue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings, a criss-cross of walls; and on three sides the precipices fell sheer into the plain. A few columns of smoke mounted perpendicularly into the windless air and were lost. âQueer,â said Lenina. âVery queer.â It was her ordinary word of condemnation. âI donât like it. And I donât like that man.â She pointed to the Indian guide who had been appointed to take them up to the pueblo. Her feeling was evidently reciprocated; the very back of the man, as he walked along before them, was hostile, sullenly contemptuous. âBesides,â she lowered her voice, âhe smells.â Bernard did not attempt to deny it. They walked on. Suddenly it was as though the whole air had come alive and were pulsing, pulsing with the indefatigable movement of blood. Up there, in Malpais, the drums were being beaten. Their feet fell in with the rhythm of that mysterious heart; they quickened their pace. Their path led them to the foot of the precipice. The sides of the great mesa ship towered over them, three hundred feet to the gunwale. âI wish we could have brought the plane,â said Lenina, looking up resentfully at the blank impending rock-face. âI hate walking. And you feel so small when youâre on the ground at the bottom of a hill.â They walked along for some way in the shadow of the mesa, rounded a projec- tion, and there, in a water-worn ravine, was the way up the companion ladder. 73 74 IDPH They climbed. It was a very steep path that zigzagged from side to side of the gully. Sometimes the pulsing of the drums was all but inaudible, at others they seemed to be beating only just round the corner. When they were half-way up, an eagle ïŹew past so close to them that the wind of his wings blew chill on their faces. In a crevice of the rock lay a pile of bones. It was all oppressively queer, and the Indian smelt stronger and stronger. They emerged at last from the ravine into the full sunlight. The top of the mesa was a ïŹat deck of stone. âLike the Charing-T Tower,â was Leninaâs comment. But she was not allowed to enjoy her discovery of this reassuring resemblance for long. A padding of soft feet made them turn round. Naked from throat to navel, their dark brown bodies painted with white lines (âlike asphalt tennis courts,â Lenina was later to explain), their faces inhuman with daubings of scarlet, black and ochre, two Indians came running along the path. Their black hair was braided with fox fur and red ïŹannel. Cloaks of turkey feathers ïŹuttered from their shoulders; huge feather diadems exploded gaudily round their heads. With every step they took came the clink and rattle of their silver bracelets, their heavy necklaces of bone and turquoise beads. They came on without a word, running quietly in their deerskin moccasins. One of them was holding a feather brush; the other carried, in either hand, what looked at a distance like three or four pieces of thick rope. One of the ropes writhed uneasily, and suddenly Lenina saw that they were snakes. The men came nearer and nearer; their dark eyes looked at her, but without giving any sign of recognition, any smallest sign that they had seen her or were aware of her existence. The writhing snake hung limp again with the rest. The men passed. âI donât like it,â said Lenina. âI donât like it.â She liked even less what awaited her at the entrance to the pueblo, where their guide had left them while he went inside for instructions. The dirt, to start with, the piles of rubbish, the dust, the dogs, the ïŹies. Her face wrinkled up into a grimace of disgust. She held her handkerchief to her nose. âBut how can they live like this?â she broke out in a voice of indignant incre- dulity. (It wasnât possible.) Bernard shrugged his shoulders philosophically. âAnyhow,â he said, âtheyâve been doing it for the last ïŹve or six thousand years. So I suppose they must be used to it by now.â âBut cleanliness is next to fordliness,â she insisted. âYes, and civilization is sterilization,â Bernard went on, concluding on a tone of http://www.idph.net IDPH 75 irony the second hypnopĂŠdic lesson in elementary hygiene. âBut these people have never heard of Our Ford, and they arenât civilized. So thereâs no point in .â âOh!â She gripped his arm. âLook.â An almost naked Indian was very slowly climbing down the ladder from the ïŹrst-ïŹoor terrace of a neighboring house-rung after rung, with the tremulous caution of extreme old age. His face was profoundly wrinkled and black, like a mask of obsidian. The toothless mouth had fallen in. At the corners of the lips, and on each side of the chin, a few long bristles gleamed almost white against the dark skin. The long unbraided hair hung down in grey wisps round his face. His body was bent and emaciated to the bone, almost ïŹeshless. Very slowly he came down, pausing at each rung before he ventured another step. âWhatâs the matter with him?â whispered Lenina. Her eyes were wide with horror and amazement. âHeâs old, thatâs all,â Bernard answered as carelessly as he could. He too was startled; but he made an effort to seem unmoved. âOld?â she repeated. âBut the Directorâs old; lots of people are old; theyâre not like that.â âThatâs because we donât allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artiïŹcially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We donât permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was at thirty. We give them transfusion of young blood. We keep their meta- bolism permanently stimulated. So, of course, they donât look like that. Partly,â he added, âbecause most of them die long before they reach this old creatureâs age. Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end.â But Lenina was not listening. She was watching the old man. Slowly, slowly he came down. His feet touched the ground. He turned. In their deep-sunken orbits his eyes were still extraordinarily bright. They looked at her for a long moment expressionlessly, without surprise, as though she had not been there at all. Then slowly, with bent back the old man hobbled past them and was gone. âBut itâs terrible,â Lenina whispered. âItâs awful. We ought not to have come here.â She felt in her pocket for her soma-only to discover that, by some unpre- cedented oversight, she had left the bottle down at the rest- house. Bernardâs pockets were also empty. Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpais unaided. They came crowding in on her thick and fast. The spectacle of two young women giving breast to their babies made her blush and turn away her face. She had never seen anything so indecent in her life. And what made it worse was that, instead of tactfully http://www.idph.net 76 IDPH ignoring it, Bernard proceeded to make open comments on this revoltingly vi- viparous scene. Ashamed, now that the effects of the soma had worn off, of the weakness he had displayed that morning in the hotel, he went out of his way to show himself strong and unorthodox. âWhat a wonderfully intimate relationship,â he said, deliberately outrageous. âAnd what an intensity of feeling it must generate! I often think one may have missed something in not having had a mother. And perhaps youâve missed something in not being a mother, Lenina. Imagine yourself sitting there with a little baby of your own. .â âBernard! How can you?â The passage of an old woman with ophthalmia and a disease of the skin distracted her from her indignation. âLetâs go away,â she begged. âI donât like it.â But at this moment their guide came back and, beckoning them to follow, led the way down the narrow street between the houses. They rounded a corner. A dead dog was lying on a rubbish heap; a woman with a goitre was looking for lice in the hair of a small girl. Their guide halted at the foot of a ladder, raised his hand perpendicularly, then darted it horizontally forward. They did what he mutely commanded-climbed the ladder and walked through the doorway, to which it gave access, into a long narrow room, rather dark and smelling of smoke and cooked grease and long-worn, long- unwashed clothes. At the further end of the room was another doorway, through which came a shaft of surdight and the noise, very loud and close, of the drums. They stepped across the threshold and found themselves on a wide terrace. Be- low them, shut in by the tall houses, was the village square, crowded with Indi- ans. Bright blankets, and feathers in black hair, and the glint of turquoise, and dark skins shining with heat. Lenina put her handkerchief to her nose again. In the open space at the centre of the square were two circular platforms of ma- sonry and trampled clay-the roofs, it was evident, of underground chambers; for in the centre of each platform was an open hatchway, with a ladder emer- ging from the lower darkness. A sound of subterranean ïŹute playing came up and was almost lost in the steady remorseless persistence of the drums. Lenina liked the drums. Shutting her eyes she abandoned herself to their soft repeated thunder, allowed it to invade her consciousness more and more com- pletely, till at last there was nothing left in the world but that one deep pulse of sound. It reminded her reassuringly of the synthetic noises made at Solidarity Services and Fordâs Day celebrations. âOrgy-porgy,â she whispered to herself. These drums beat out just the same rhythms. There was a sudden startling burst of singing-hundreds of male voices crying out ïŹercely in harsh metallic unison. A few long notes and silence, the thunde- http://www.idph.net IDPH 77 rous silence of the drums; then shrill, in a neighing treble, the womenâs answer. Then again the drums; and once more the menâs deep savage afïŹrmation of their manhood. Queer-yes. The place was queer, so was the music, so were the clothes and the goitres and the skin diseases and the old people. But the performance itself- there seemed to be nothing specially queer about that. âIt reminds me of a lower-caste Community Sing,â she told Bernard. But a little later it was reminding her a good deal less of that innocuous func- tion. For suddenly there had swarmed up from those round chambers un- terground a ghastly troop of monsters. Hideously masked or painted out of all semblance of humanity, they had tramped out a strange limping dance round the square; round and again round, singing as they went, round and round-each time a little faster; and the drums had changed and quickened their rhythm, so that it became like the pulsing of fever in the ears; and the crowd had begun to sing with the dancers, louder and louder; and ïŹrst one woman had shrieked, and then another and another, as though they were being killed; and then suddenly the leader of the dancers broke out of the line, ran to a big wooden chest which was standing at one end of the square, raised the lid and pulled out a pair of black snakes. A great yell went up from the crowd, and all the other dancers ran towards him with out- stretched hands. He tossed the snakes to the ïŹrst-comers, then dipped back into the chest for more. More and more, black snakes and brown and mottled- he ïŹung them out. And then the dance began again on a different rhythm. Round and round they went with their snakes, snakily, with a soft undulating movement at the knees and hips. Round and round. Then the leader gave a signal, and one after another, all the snakes were ïŹung down in the middle of the square; an old man came up from underground and sprinkled them with corn meal, and from the other hat- chway came a woman and sprinkled them with water from a black jar. Then the old man lifted his hand and, startingly, terrifyingly, there was absolute si- lence. The drums stopped beating, life seemed to have come to an end. The old man pointed towards the two hatchways that gave entrance to the lower world. And slowly, raised by invisible hands from below, there emerged from the one a painted image of an eagle, from the other that of a man, naked, and nailed to a cross. They hung there, seemingly self-sustained, as though watching. The old man clapped his hands. Naked but for a white cotton breech-cloth, a boy of about eighteen stepped out of the crowd and stood before him, his hands cros- sed over his chest, his head bowed. The old man made the sign of the cross over him and turned away. Slowly, the boy began to walk round the writhing heap of snakes. He had completed the ïŹrst circuit and was half- way through the second when, from among the dancers, a tall man wearing the mask of a coyote and holding in his hand a whip of plaited leather, advanced towards him. The boy moved on as though unaware of the otherâs existence. The coyote-man rai- http://www.idph.net 78 IDPH sed his whip, there was a long moment af expectancy, then a swift movement, the whistle of the lash and its loud ïŹat-sounding impact on the ftesh. The boyâs body quivered; but he made no sound, he walked on at the same slow, steady pace. The coyote struck again, again; and at every blow at ïŹrst a gasp, and then a deep groan went up from the crowd. The boy walked. Twice, thrice, four times round he went. The blood was streaming. Five times round, six times round. Suddenly Lenina covered her face shish her hands and began to sob. âOh, stop them, stop them!â she implored. But the whip fell and fell inexora- bly. Seven times round. Then all at once the boy staggered and, still without a sound, pitched forward on to his face. Bending over him, the old man tou- ched his back with a long white feather, held it up for a moment, crimson, for the people to see then shook it thrice over the snakes. A few drops fell, and suddenly the drums broke out again into a panic of hurrying notes; there was a great shout. The dancers rushed forward, picked up the snakes and ran out of the square. Men, women, children, all the crowd ran after them. A minute later the square was empty, only the boy remained, prone where he had fallen, quite still. Three old women came out of one of the houses, and with some difïŹculty lifted him and carried him in. The eagle and the man on the cross kept guard for a little while over the empty pueblo; then, as though they had seen enough, sank slowly down through their hatchways, out of sight, into the nether world. Lenina was still sobbing. âToo awful,â she kept repeating, and all Bernardâs consolations were in vain. âToo awful! That blood!â She shuddered. âOh, I wish I had my soma.â There was the sound of feet in the inner room. Lenina did not move, but sat with her face in her hands, unseeing, apart. Only Bernard turned round. The dress of the young man who now stepped out on to the terrace was Indian; but his plaited hair was straw-coloured, his eyes a pale blue, and his skin a white skin, bronzed. âHullo. Good-morrow,â said the stranger, in faultless but peculiar English. âYouâre civilized, arenât you? You come from the Other Place, outside the Re- servation?â âWho on earth. ?â Bernard began in astonishment. The young man sighed and shook his head. âA most unhappy gentleman.â And, pointing to the bloodstains in the centre of the square, âDo you see that damned spot?â he asked in a voice that trembled with emotion. âA gramme is better than a damn,â said Lenina mechanically from behind her hands. âI wish I had my soma!â http://www.idph.net IDPH 79 âI ought to have been there,â the young man went on. âWhy wouldnât they let me be the sacriïŹce? Iâd have gone round ten times-twelve, ïŹfteen. Palowhtiwa only got as far as seven. They could have had twice as much blood from me. The multitudinous seas incarnadine.â He ïŹung out his arms in a lavish gesture; then, despairingly, let them fall again. âBut they wouldnât let me. They disliked me for my complexion. Itâs always been like that. Always.â Tears stood in the young manâs eyes; he was ashamed and turned away. Astonishment made Lenina forget the deprivation of soma. She uncovered her face and, for the ïŹrst time, looked at the stranger. âDo you mean to say that you wanted to be hit with that whip?â Still averted from her, the young man made a sign of afïŹrmation. âFor the sake of the pueblo-to make the rain come and the corn grow. And to please Pookong and Jesus. And then to show that I can bear pain without crying out. Yes,â and his voice suddenly took on a new resonance, he turned with a proud squaring of the shoulders, a proud, deïŹant lifting of the chin âto show that Iâm a man. Oh!â He gave
đ Worlds Colliding: Cultural Shock
đïž First contact between John, a young man raised in a "Reservation," and Lenina, a woman from the "Other Place," reveals profound cultural differences through their awkward, charged interaction
đ The stark material contrast between societies manifests in everything from hygiene practices to clothingâ"The more stitches, the less riches" versus mending worn garments
đ Social norms around sexuality and reproduction create deep conflictâLinda's "civilized" promiscuity ("everyone belongs to everyone") clashes violently with the Reservation's monogamous expectations
đ Knowledge transfer between worlds remains fragmented and confusing, with John learning to read from a technical manual about "embryo conditioning" while also absorbing tribal stories and traditions
đș Traditional craftsmanship with Mitsima offers John profound satisfaction and purpose, contrasting sharply with his painful exclusion from tribal rituals that leaves him "alone in a skeleton world"
âïž John's self-imposed suffering (standing like Jesus on the cross) reveals his complex moral framework shaped by religious imagery, punishment, and a desire for transcendent meaning
đ The prospect of visiting the "brave new world" ignites John's imagination with Shakespearean wonder, while Bernard sees strategic opportunity in bringing this "savage" to civilization
đ John's innocent fascination with Lenina's belongings and sleeping form reveals his romantic idealism, combining Shakespearean reverence with forbidden desire that he both yearns for and condemns
đ§Ș Hatcheries and Conditioning Centers form the backbone of this dystopian society, where humans are mass-produced in bottles, genetically predetermined into castes, and conditioned through hypnopaedia to accept their roles
đ„ Social conformity reigns supreme, with any deviation from orthodox behavior considered more dangerous than murderâthe Director's attempted public shaming of Bernard dramatically backfires when Linda and John expose his past "natural" parenthood
đ Soma provides escape through state-sanctioned drug holidays, allowing citizens like Linda to retreat from reality into "eternity" while maintaining social stability through chemical contentment
đ Status and popularity fluctuate based on proximity to powerâBernard's social standing transforms instantly when he becomes John's guardian, revealing the shallow nature of relationships in this engineered society
đ± The Savage serves as both observer and critic, his Shakespeare-influenced perspective highlighting the dehumanizing aspects of "civilization" with his famous line: "O brave new world that has such people in it"
đ« Educational indoctrination shapes citizens through hypnopaedic conditioning, death training, and censorship of literature like Shakespeare, ensuring conformity to the World State's values
đ Soma serves as the society's universal escape mechanism, distributed daily to workers and used by individuals like Lenina to numb emotional distress when reality becomes uncomfortable
đ Entertainment like "feelies" bombards citizens with sensory stimulation and shallow pleasures, replacing authentic human connection with manufactured experiences
đ§ Savage's resistance highlights the clash between natural human emotions and the artificial happiness of civilization, as he rejects both the sexual norms and social gatherings of the new world
đ Social hierarchy rigidly determines worth and opportunity, with Alphas and Betas enjoying privileges while lower castes face predetermined limitations and standardized appearances
đŹ Scientific control extends to all aspects of life, with authorities like Mustapha Mond suppressing knowledge that might threaten social stability or suggest purpose beyond happiness
đ Emotional conflict erupts when the Savage's đ romantic idealism collides with Lenina's đ conditioned sexuality, revealing the unbridgeable gap between their worldviews
đ„ Friendship dynamics between Bernard, Helmholtz, and the Savage expose how đ jealousy and đ€ loyalty operate differently in a society that values shallow connections over deep bonds
đ Shakespeare's poetry serves as both bridge and barrierâoffering profound emotional expression that resonates with the Savage but appears absurd or incomprehensible to the conditioned citizens
đ§ Soma dependency functions as society's escape mechanism, allowing citizens to avoid confronting uncomfortable emotions while maintaining the illusion of happiness
đ Cultural incompatibility reaches its climax when Lenina's direct sexual approach horrifies the Savage, who seeks traditional courtship rituals that have no place in this engineered society
in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words âNot to be publishedâ drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the ïŹrst; then sighed, âWhat fun it would be,â he thought, âif one didnât have to think about happiness!â With closed eyes, his face shining with rapture, John was softly declaiming to vacancy: âOh! she doth teach the torches to burn bright. It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiopâs ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear .â The golden T lay shining on Leninaâs bosom. Sportively, the Arch-Community- Songster caught hold of it, sportively he puled, pulled. âI think,â said Leni- na suddenly, breaking a long silence, âIâd better take a couple of grammes of soma.â Bernard, by this time, was fast asleep and smiling at the private paradise of http://www.idph.net IDPH 119 his dreams. Smiling, smiling. But inexorably, every thirty seconds, the minute hand of the electric clock above his bed jumped forward with an almost imper- ceptible click. Click, click, click, click. And it was morning. Bernard was back among the miseries of space and time. It was in the lowest spirits that he taxied across to his work at the Conditioning Centre. The intoxication of success had evaporated; he was soberly his old self; and by contrast with the temporary bal- loon of these last weeks, the old self seemed unprecedentedly heavier than the surrounding atmosphere. To this deïŹated Bernard the Savage showed himself unexpectedly sympathetic. âYouâre more like what you were at Malpais,â he said, when Bernard had told him his plaintive story. âDo you remember when we ïŹrst talked together? Out- side the little house. Youâre like what you were then.â âBecause Iâm unhappy again; thatâs why.â âWell, Iâd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.â âI like that,â said Bernard bitterly. âWhen itâs you who were the cause of it all. Refusing to come to my party and so turning them all against me!â He knew that what he was saying was absurd in its injustice; he admitted inwar- dly, and at last even aloud, the truth of all that the Savage now said about the worthlessness of friends who could be turned upon so slight a provocation in- to persecuting enemies. But in spite of this knowledge and these admissions, in spite of the fact that his friendâs support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard continued perversely to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Savage, to mediate a campaign of small revenges to be wreaked upon him. Nourishing a grievance against the Arch- Community-Songster was useless; there was no possibility of being revenged on the Chief Bottler or the Assistant Predestinator. As a victim, the Savage possessed, for Bernard, this enormous superiority over the others: that he was accessible. One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inïŹict upon our enemies. Bernardâs other victim-friend was Helmholtz. When, discomïŹted, he came and asked once more for the friendship which, in his prosperity, he had not thought it worth his while to preserve. Helmholtz gave it; and gave it without a re- proach, without a comment, as though he had forgotten that there had ever been a quarrel. Touched, Bernard felt himself at the same time humiliated by this magnanimity-a magnanimity the more extraordinary and therefore the mo- re humiliating in that it owed nothing to soma and everything to Helmholtzâs character. It was the Helmholtz of daily life who forgot and forgave, not the Helmholtz of a half-gramme holiday. Bernard was duly grateful (it was an http://www.idph.net 120 IDPH enormous comfort to have his friend again) and also duly reseritful (it would be pleasure to take some revenge on Helmholtz for his generosity). At their ïŹrst meeing after the estrangement, Bernard poured out the tale of his miseries and accepted consolation. It was not till some days later that he learned, to his surprise and with a twinge of shame, that he was not the only one who had been in trouble. Helmholtz had also come into conïŹict with Authority. âIt was over some rhymes,â he explained. âI was giving my usual course of Advanced Emotional Engineering for Third Year Students. Twelve lectures, of which the seventh is about rhymes. âOn the Use of Rhymes in Moral Propa- ganda and Advertisement,â to be precise. I always illustrate my lecture with a lot of technical examples. This time I thought Iâd give them one Iâd just written myself. Pure madness, of course; but I couldnât resist it.â He laughed. âI was curious to see what their reactions would be. Besides,â he added more gravely, âI wanted to do a bit of propaganda; I was trying to engineer them into feeling as Iâd felt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford!â He laughed again. âWhat an outcry there was! The Principal had me up and threatened to hand me the immediate sack. lâm a marked man.â âBut what were your rhymes?â Bernard asked. âThey were about being alone.â Bernardâs eyebrows went up. âIâll recite them to you, if you like.â And Helmholtz began: âYesterdayâs committee, Sticks, but a broken drum, Midnight in the City, Flutes in a vacuum, Shut lips, sleeping faces, Every stopped machine, The dumb and littered places Where crowds have been:. All silences rejoice, Weep (loudly or low), Speak-but with the voice Of whom, I do not know. http://www.idph.net IDPH 121 Absence, say, of Susanâs, Absenee of Egeriaâs Arms and respective bosoms, Lips and, ah, posteriors, Slowly form a presence; Whose? and, I ask, of what So absurd an essence, That something, which is not, Nevertheless should populate Empty night more solidly Than that with which we copulate, Why should it seem so squalidly? Well, I gave them that as an example, and they reported me to the Principal.â âIâm not surprised,â said Bernard. âItâs ïŹatly against all their sleep- teaching. Remember, theyâve had at least a quarter of a million warnings against solitu- de.â âI know. But I thought Iâd like to see what the effect would be.â âWell, youâve seen now.â Helmholtz only laughed. âI feel,â he said, after a silence, as though I were just beginning to have something to write about. As though I were beginning to be able to use that power I feel Iâve got inside me-that extra, latent power. Something seems to be coming to me.â In spite of all his troubles, he seemed, Bernard thought, profoundly happy. Helmholtz and the Savage took to one another at once. So cordially indeed that Bernard felt a sharp pang of jealousy. In all these weeks he had never come to so close an intimacy with the Savage as Helmholtz immediately achi- eved. Watching them, listening to their talk, he found himself sometimes re- sentfully wishing that he had never brought them together. He was ashamed of his jealousy and alternately made efforts of will and took soma to keep him- self from feeling it. But the efforts were not very successful; and between the soma-holidays there were, of necessity, intervals. The odius sentiment kept on returning. At his third meeting with the Savage, Helmholtz recited his rhymes on Solitude. http://www.idph.net 122 IDPH âWhat do you think of them?â he asked when he had done. The Savage shook his head. âListen to this,â was his answer; and unlocking the drawer in which he kept his mouse-eaten book, he opened and read: âLet the bird of loudest lay On the sole Arabian tree, Herald sad and trumpet be .â Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement. At âsole Arabian treeâ he star- ted; at âthou shrieking harbingerâ he smiled with sudden pleasure; at âevery fowl of tyrant wingâ the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at âdefunctive musicâ he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion. The Sa- vage read on: âProperty was thus appallâd, That the self was not the same; Single natureâs double name Neither two nor one was callâd Reason in itself confounded Saw division grow together .â âOrgy-porgy!â said Bernard, interrupting the reading with a loud, unpleasant laugh. âItâs just a Solidarity Service hymn.â He was revenging himself on his two friends for liking one another more than they liked him. In the course of their next two or three meetings he frequently repeated this little act of vengeance. It was simple and, since both Helmholtz and the Savage were dreadfully pained by the shattering and deïŹlement of a favourite poetic crystal, extremely effective. In the end, Helmholtz threatened to kick him out of the room if he dared to interrupt again. And yet, strangely enough, the next interruption, the most disgraceful of all, came from Helmholtz himself. The Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud-reading (for all the time he was seeing himself as Romeo and Lenina as Juliet) with an intense and quive- ring passion. Helmholtz had listened to the scene of the loversâ ïŹrst meeting with a puzzled interest. The scene in the orchard had delighted him with its poetry; but the sentiments expressed had made him smile. Getting into such a state about having a girl-it seemed rather ridiculous. But, taken detail by verbal detail, what a superb piece of emotional engineering! âThat old fellow,â he said, âhe makes our best propaganda technicians look absolutely silly.â The Savage smiled triumphantly and resumed his reading. All went tolerably well until, in the last scene of the third act, Capulet and Lady Capulet began to bully Juliet http://www.idph.net IDPH 123 to marry Paris. Helmholtz had been restless throughout the entire scene; but when, pathetically mimed by the Savage, Juliet cried out: âIs there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the bottom of my grief? O sweet my mother, cast me not away: Delay this marriage for a month, a week; Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed In that dim monument where Tybalt lies .â when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing. The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to have some one she didnât want! And the idiotic girl not saying that she was having some one else whom (for the moment, at any rate) she preferred! In its smutty ab- surdity the situation was irresistibly comical. He had managed, with a heroic effort, to hold down the mounting pressure of his hilarity; but âsweet motherâ (in the Savageâs tremulous tone of anguish) and the reference to Tybalt lying de- ad, but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him. He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down his face-quenchlessly laughed while, pale with a sense of outrage, the Savage looked at him over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued, closed it indignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removes his pearl from before swine, locked it away in its drawer. âAnd yet,â said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologi- ze, he had molliïŹed the Savage into listening to his explanations, âI know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one canât write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propa- ganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. Youâve got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you canât think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!â He shook his head. âYou canât expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And whoâs going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not ha- ving her?â (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at the ïŹoor, saw nothing.) âNo.â he concluded, with a sigh, âit wonât do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one ïŹnd it?â He was silent; then, shaking his head, âI donât know,â he said at last, âI donât know.â http://www.idph.net 124 IDPH http://www.idph.net Thirteen HENRY FOSTER loomed up through the twilight of the Embryo Store. âLike to come to a feely this evening?â Lenina shook her head without speaking. âGoing out with some one else?â It interested him to know which of his friends was being had by which other. âIs it Benito?â he questioned. She shook her head again. Henry detected the weariness in those purple eyes, the pallor beneath that glaze of lupus, the sadness at the corners of the unsmiling crimson mouth. âYouâre not feeling ill, are you?â he asked, a triïŹe anxiously, afraid that she might be suffering from one of the few remaining infectious diseases. Yet once more Lenina shook her head. âAnyhow, you ought to go and see the doctor,â said Henry. âA doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away,â he added heartily, driving home his hypnopĂŠdic adage with a clap on the shoulder. âPerhaps you need a Pregnancy Substitute,â he suggested. âOr else an extra-strong V .P .S. treatment. Sometimes, you know, the standard passion surrogate isnât quite .â âOh, for Fordâs sake,â said Lenina, breaking her stubborn silence, âshut up!â And she turned back to her neglected embryos. A V .P .S. treatment indeed! She would have laughed, if she hadnât been on the point of crying. As though she hadnât got enough V . P . of her own! She sighed profoundly as she reïŹlled her syringe. âJohn,â she murmured to herself, âJohn .â Then âMy Ford,â she wondered, âhave I given this one its sleeping sickness injection, or havenât I?â She simply couldnât remember. In the end, she decided not to run the risk of letting it have a second dose, and moved down the line to the next bottle. Twenty-two years, eight months, and four days from that moment, a pro- 125 126 IDPH mising young Alpha-Minus administrator at Mwanza-Mwanza was to die of trypanosomiasis-the ïŹrst case for over half a century. Sighing, Lenina went on with her work. An hour later, in the Changing Room, Fanny was energetically protesting. âBut itâs absurd to let yourself get into a state like this. Simply absurd,â she repeated. âAnd what about? A man-one man.â âBut heâs the one I want.â âAs though there werenât millions of other men in the world.â âBut I donât want them.â âHow can you know till youâve tried?â âI have tried.â âBut how many?â asked Fanny, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously. âOne, two?â âDozens. But,â shaking her head, âit wasnât any good,â she added. âWell, you must persevere,â said Fanny sententiously. But it was obvious that her conïŹdence in her own prescriptions had been shaken. âNothing can be achieved without perseverance.â âBut meanwhile .â âDonât think of him.â âI canât help it.â âTake soma, then.â âI do.â âWell, go on.â âBut in the intervals I still like him. I shall always like him.â âWell, if thatâs the case,â said Fanny, with decision, âwhy donât you just go and take him. Whether he wants it or no.â âBut if you knew how terribly queer he was!â âAll the more reason for taking a ïŹrm line.â âItâs all very well to say that.â âDonât stand any nonsense. Act.â Fannyâs voice was a trumpet; she might have been a Y.W.F.A. lecturer giving an evening talk to adolescent Beta- Minuses. âYes, act-at once. Do it now.â http://www.idph.net IDPH 127 âIâd be scared,â said Lenina âWell, youâve only got to take half a gramme of soma ïŹrst. And now Iâm going to have my bath.â She marched off, trailing her towel. The bell rang, and the Savage, who was impatiently hoping that Helmholtz would come that afternoon (for having at last made up his mind to talk to Helmholtz about Lenina, he could not bear to postpone his conïŹdences a mo- ment longer), jumped up and ran to the door. âI had a premonition it was you, Helmholtz,â he shouted as he opened. On the threshold, in a white acetate-satin sailor suit,and with a round white cap rakishly tilted over her left ear, stood Lenina. âOh!â said the Savage, as though some one had struck him a heavy blow. Half a gramme had been enough to make Lenina forget her fears and her em- barrassments. âHullo, John,â she said, smiling, and walked past him into the room. Automatically he closed the door and followed her. Lenina sat down. There was a long silence. âYou donât seem very glad to see me, John,â she said at last. âNot glad?â The Savage looked at her reproachfully; then suddenly fell on his knees before her and, taking Leninaâs hand, reverently kissed it. âNot glad? Oh, if you only knew,â he whispered and, venturing to raise his eyes to her face, âAdmired Lenina,â he went on, âindeed the top of admiration, worth whatâs dearest in the world.â She smiled at him with a luscious tenderness. âOh, you so perfectâ (she was leaning towards him with parted lips), âso perfect and so peerless are createdâ (nearer and nearer) âof every creatureâs best.â Still nearer. The Savage suddenly scrambled to his feet. âThatâs why,â he said speaking with averted face, âI wanted to do something ïŹrst. I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasnât absolutely un-worthy. I wanted to do something.â âWhy should you think it necessary .â Lenina began, but left the sentence unïŹ- nished. There was a note of irritation in her voice. When one has leant forward, nearer and nearer, with parted lips-only to ïŹnd oneself, quite suddenly, as a clumsy oaf scrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing at all-well, there is a reason, even with half a gramme of soma circulating in oneâs blood-stream, a genuine reason for annoyance. âAt Malpais,â the Savage was incoherently mumbling, âyou had to bring her the skin of a mountain lion-I mean, when you wanted to marry some one. Or else a wolf.â âThere arenât any lions in England,â Lenina almost snapped. http://www.idph.net 128 IDPH âAnd even if there were,â the Savage added, with sudden contemptuous re- sentment, âpeople would kill them out of helicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something. I wouldnât do that, Lenina.â He squared his shoulders, he ventured to look at her and was met with a stare of annoyed incomprehen- sion. Confused, âIâll do anything,â he went on, more and more incoherently. âAnything you tell me. There be some sports are painful-you know. But their labour delight in them sets off. Thatâs what I feel. I mean Iâd sweep the ïŹoor if you wanted.â âBut weâve got vacuum cleaners here,â said Lenina in bewilderment. âIt isnât necessary.â âNo, of course it isnât necessary. But some kinds of baseness are nobly under- gone. Iâd like to undergo something nobly. Donât you see?â âBut if there are vacuum cleaners .â âThatâs not the point.â âAnd Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them,â she went on, âwell, really, why?â âWhy? But for you, for you. Just to show that I .â âAnd what on earth vacuum cleaners have got to do with lions .â âTo show how much .â âOr lions with being glad to see me .â She was getting more and more exaspe- rated. âHow much I love you, Lenina,â he brought out almost desperately. An emblem of the inner tide of startled elation, the blood rushed up into Leni- naâs cheeks. âDo you mean it, John?â âBut I hadnât meant to say so,â cried the Savage, clasping his hands in a kind of agony. âNot until. Listen, Lenina; in Malpais people get married.â âGet what?â The irritation had begun to creep back into her voice. What was he talking about now? âFor always. They make a promise to live together for always.â âWhat a horrible idea!â Lenina was genuinely shocked. âOutliving beautyâs outward with a mind that cloth renew swifter than blood decays.â âWhat?â âItâs like that in Shakespeare too. âIf thou cost break her virgin knot before all http://www.idph.net IDPH 129 sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite .ââ âFor Fordâs sake, John, talk sense. I canât understand a word you say. First itâs vacuum cleaners; then itâs knots. Youâre driving me crazy.â She jumped up and, as though afraid that he might run away from her physically, as well as with his mind, caught him by the wrist. âAnswer me this question: do you really like me, or donât you?â There was a momentâs silence; then, in a very low voice, âI love you more than anything in the world,â he said. âThen why on earth didnât you say so?â she cried, and so intense was her exasperation that she drove her sharp nails into the skin of his wrist. âInstead of drivelling away about knots and vacuum cleaners and lions, and making me miserable for weeks and weeks.â She released his hand and ïŹung it angrily away from her. âIf I didnât like you so much,â she said, âIâd be furious with you.â And suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips soft against his own. So deliciously soft, so warm and electric that inevitably he found himself thinking of the embraces in Three Weeks in a Helicopter. Ooh! ooh! the stereos- copic blonde and anh! the more than real black-amoor. Horror, horror, horror. he ïŹred to disengage himself; but Lenina tightened her embrace. âWhy didnât you say so?â she whispered, drawing back her face to look at him. Her eyes were tenderly reproachful. âThe murkiest den, the most opportune placeâ (the voice of conscience thun- dered poetically), âthe strongest suggestion our worser genius can, shall never melt mine honour into lust. Never, never!â he resolved. âYou silly boy!â she was saying. âI wanted you so much. And if you wanted me too, why didnât you? .â âBut, Lenina .â he began protesting; and as she immediately untwined her arms, as she stepped away from him, he thought, for a moment, that she had taken his unspoken hint. But when she unbuckled her white patent cartridge belt and hung it carefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect that he had been mistaken. âLenina!â he repeated apprehensively. She put her hand to her neck and gave a long vertical pull; her white sailorâs blouse was ripped to the hem; suspicion condensed into a too, too solid cer- tainty. âLenina, what are you doing?â Zip, zip! Her answer was wordless. She stepped out of her bell-bottomed trou- http://www.idph.net 130 IDPH sers. Her zippicamiknicks were a pale shell pink. The Arch-Community- Songs- terâs golden T dangled at her breast. âFor those milk paps that through the window bars bore at menâs eyes....â The singing, thundering, magical words made her seem doubly dangerous, doubly alluring. Soft, soft, but how piercing! boring and drilling into reason, tunnelling through resolution. âThe strongest oaths are straw to the ïŹre iâ the blood. Be more abstemious, or else .â Zip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting ïŹrst of the right foot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as though deïŹated on the ïŹoor. Still wearing her shoes and socks, and her rakishly tilted round white cap, she advanced towards him. âDarling. Darling! If only youâd said so before!â She held out her arms. But instead of also saying âDarling!â and holding out his arms, the Savage retreated in terror, ïŹapping his hands at her as though he were trying to scare away some intruding and dangerous animal. Four backwards steps, and he was brought to bay against the wall. âSweet!â said Lenina and, laying her hands on his shoulders, pressed herself against him. âPut your arms round me,â
đ„ Violent Passion Unleashed
đ Savage's rage erupts when Lenina's sexual advances trigger deep cultural conflict, transforming him from lover to violent aggressor shouting "whore" while quoting Shakespeare's condemnations of lust
đ€ Identical twins appear throughout as dehumanized products of the "Bokanovsky process," representing the loss of individuality in this society where people are mass-produced and conditioned for specific roles
đ Soma functions as a powerful escape mechanism, allowing Linda to retreat into pleasant hallucinations rather than recognize her son John during her final moments
đ The phrase "brave new world" transforms from hopeful to ironic as John confronts the horrifying reality of this society where death, identity, and human connection have been stripped of meaning and dignity
đ§Ș Soma distribution reveals the dystopian society's method of controlling its citizens through chemical happiness, keeping the lower-caste Deltas docile and compliant
đ„ The Savage launches a dramatic rebellion against the system, attempting to free the Deltas by destroying their soma supply while shouting "Freedom!" in a powerful act of resistance
đź Authorities swiftly crush the uprising using sophisticated crowd control techniquesâsoma vapor, synthetic music, and "Voice of Reason" propagandaâdemonstrating the regime's efficient methods for maintaining social order
đïž Mustapha Mond, the World Controller, defends the system's stability by explaining how social engineering (including caste conditioning) prevents chaos while sacrificing art, passion, and authentic human experience
đ The fundamental conflict emerges between stability and freedomâthe controlled happiness of the World State versus the messy, painful authenticity the Savage represents from his Shakespeare-influenced perspective
The voi- ce was that of a jaunty young Alpha, who had entered carrying a black iron cash-box. A murmur of satisfaction went up from the expectant twins. They forgot all about the Savage. Their attention was now focused on the black cash- box, which the young man had placed on the table, and was now in process of unlocking. The lid was lifted. âOo-oh!â said all the hundred and sixty-two simultaneously, as though they were looking at ïŹreworks. The young man took out a handful of tiny pill-boxes. âNow,â he said peremp- torily, âstep forward, please. One at a time, and no shoving.â One at a time, with no shoving, the twins stepped forward. First two males, then a female, then another male, then three females, then. The Savage stood looking on. âO brave new world, O brave new world .â In his mind the singing words seemed to change their tone. 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. âO brave new world!â Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something ïŹne and noble. âO brave new world!â It was a challenge, a command. âNo shoving there now!â shouted the Deputy Sub-Bursar in a fury. He slam- med down he lid of his cash-box. âI shall stop the distribution unless I have good behaviour.â The Deltas muttered, jostled one another a little, and then were still. The threat had been effective. Deprivation of soma-appalling thought! âThatâs better,â said the young man, and reopened his cash-box. Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others should live in freedom, and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, a duty. And suddenly it was lumi- nously clear to the Savage what he must do; it was as though a shutter had been opened, a curtain drawn back. âNow,â said the Deputy Sub-Bursar. Another khaki female stepped forward. âStop!â called the Savage in a loud and ringing voice. âStop!â He pushed his way to the table; the Deltas stared at him with astonishment. âFord!â said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, below his breath. âItâs the Savage.â He felt scared. http://www.idph.net IDPH 145 âListen, I beg of you,â cried the Savage earnestly. âLend me your ears .â He had never spoken in public before, and found it very difïŹcult to express what he wanted to say. âDonât take that horrible stuff. Itâs poison, itâs poison.â âI say, Mr. Savage,â said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, smiling propitiatingly. âWould you mind letting me .â âPoison to soul as well as body.â âYes, but let me get on with my distribution, wonât you? Thereâs a good fellow.â With the cautious tenderness of one who strokes a notoriously vicious animal, he patted the Savageâs arm. âJust let me .â âNever!â cried the Savage. âBut look here, old man .â âThrow it all away, that horrible poison.â The words âThrow it all awayâ pierced through the enfolding layers of incom- prehension to the quick of the Deltaâs consciousness. An angry murmur went up from the crowd. âI come to bring you freedom,â said the Savage, turning back towards the twins. âI come .â The Deputy Sub-Bursar heard no more; he had slipped out of the vestibule and was looking up a number in the telephone book. âNot in his own rooms,â Bernard summed up. âNot in mine, not in yours. Not at the Aphroditaum; not at the Centre or the College. Where can he have got to?â Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. They had come back from their work ex- pecting to ïŹnd the Savage waiting for them at one or other of the usual meeting- places, and there was no sign of the fellow. Which was annoying, as they had meant to nip across to Biarritz in Helmholtzâs four-seater sporticopter. Theyâd be late for dinner if he didnât come soon. âWeâll give him ïŹve more minutes,â said Helmholtz. âIf he doesnât turn up by then, weâll .â The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted him. He picked up the receiver. âHullo. Speaking.â Then, after a long interval of listening, âFord in Flivver!â he swore. âIâll come at once.â âWhat is it?â Bernard asked. âA fellow I know at the Park Lane Hospital,â said Helmholtz. âThe Savage is there. Seems to have gone mad. Anyhow, itâs urgent. Will you come with me?â http://www.idph.net 146 IDPH Together they hurried along the corridor to the lifts. âBut do you like being slaves?â the Savage was saying as they entered the Hos- pital. His face was ïŹushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. âDo you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking,â he added, exaspe- rated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. âYes, puking!â he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty-all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. âDonât you want to be free and men? Donât you even understand what manhood and freedom are?â Rage was making him ïŹuent; the words came easily, in a rush. âDonât you?â he repeated, but got no answer to his question. âVery well then,â he went on grimly. âIâll teach you; Iâll make you be free whether you want to or not.â And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area. For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petriïŹed, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror. âHeâs mad,â whispered Bernard, staring with wide open eyes. âTheyâll kill him. Theyâll .â A great shout suddenly went up from the mob; a wave of movement drove it menacingly towards the Savage. âFord help him!â said Bernard, and averted his eyes. âFord helps those who help themselves.â And with a laugh, actually a laugh of exultation, Helmholtz Watson pushed his way through the crowd. âFree, free!â the Savage shouted, and with one hand continued to throw the soma into the area while, with the other, he punched the indistinguishable faces of his assailants. âFree!â And suddenly there was Helmholtz at his side-âGood old HelmholtzÂĄâ-also punching-âMen at lastÂĄâ-and in the interval also throwing the poison out by handfuls through the open window. âYes, men! men!â and there was no more poison left. He picked up the cash-box and showed them its black emptiness. âYouâre free!â Howling, the Deltas charged with a redoubled fury. Hesitant on the fringes of the battle. âTheyâre done for,â 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 didnât 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. http://www.idph.net IDPH 147 Bernard dashed to meet them. He waved his arms; and it was action, he was doing something. He shouted âHelp!â several times, more and more loudly so as to give himself the illusion of helping. âHelp! Help! HELP!â The policemen pushed him out of the way and got on with their work. Three men with spraying machines buckled to their shoulders pumped thick clouds of soma vapour into the air. Two more were busy round the portable Synthetic Music Box. Carrying water pistols charged with a powerful anĂŠsthetic, four others had pushed their way into the crowd and were methodically laying out, squirt by squirt, the more ferocious of the ïŹghters. âQuick, quick!â yelled Bernard. âTheyâll be killed if you donât hurry. Theyâll. Oh!â Annoyed by his chatter, one of the policemen had given him a shot from his water pistol. Bernard stood for a second or two wambling unsteadily on legs that seemed to have lost their bones, their tendons, their muscles, to have become mere sticks of jelly, and at last not even jelly-water: he tumbled in a heap on the ïŹoor. Suddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began to speak. The Voi- ce of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength). Straight from the depths of a non-existent heart, âMy friends, my friends!â said the Voi- ce so pathetically, with a note of such inïŹnitely tender reproach that, behind their gas masks, even the policemenâs eyes were momentarily dimmed with te- ars, âwhat is the meaning of this? Why arenât you all being happy and good together? Happy and good,â the Voice repeated. âAt peace, at peace.â It trem- bled, sank into a whisper and momentarily expired. âOh, I do want you to be happy,â it began, with a yearning earnestness. âI do so want you to be good! Please, please be good and .â Two minutes later the Voice and the soma vapour had produced their effect. In tears, the Deltas were kissing and hugging one another-half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensive embrace. Even Helmholtz and the Savage were almost crying. A fresh supply of pill-boxes was brought in from the Bursary; a new distribution was hastily made and, to the sound of the Voiceâs ricuy affectionate, baritone valedictions, the twins dispersed, blubbering as though their hearts would break. âGood-bye, my dearest, dearest friends, Ford keep you! Good- bye, my dearest, dearest friends, Ford keep you. Good-bye my dearest, dearest .â When the last of the Deltas had gone the policeman switched off the current. The angelic Voice fell silent. âWill you come quietly?â asked the Sergeant, âor must we anĂŠsthetize?â He pointed his water pistol menacingly. http://www.idph.net 148 IDPH âOh, weâll come quietly,â the Savage answered, dabbing alternately a cut lip, a scratched neck, and a bitten left hand. Still keeping his handkerchief to his bleeding nose Helmholtz nodded in con- ïŹrmation. Awake and having recovered the use of his legs, Bernard had chosen this mo- ment to move as inconspicuously as he could towards the door. âHi, you there,â called the Sergeant, and a swine-masked policeman hurried across the room and laid a hand on the young manâs shoulder. Bernard turned with an expression of indignant innocence. Escaping? He hadnât dreamed of such a thing. âThough what on earth you want me for,â he said to the Sergeant, âI really canât imagine.â âYouâre a friend of the prisonerâs, arenât you?â âWell .â said Bernard, and hesitated. No, he really couldnât deny it. âWhy shouldnât I be?â he asked. âCome on then,â said the Sergeant, and led the way towards the door and the waiting police car. http://www.idph.net Sixteen THE ROOM into which the three were ushered was the Controllerâs study. âHis fordship will be down in a moment.â The Gamma butler left them to themselves. Helmholtz laughed aloud. âItâs more like a caffeine-solution party than a trial,â he said, and let himself fall into the most luxurious of the pneumatic arm-chairs. âCheer up, Bernard,â he added, catching sight of his friendâs green unhappy face. But Bernard would not be cheered; without answering, without even looking at Helmholtz, he went and sat down on the most uncomfortable chair in the room, carefully chosen in the obscure hope of somehow deprecating the wrath of the higher powers. The Savage meanwhile wandered restlessly round the room, peering with a vague superïŹcial inquisitiveness at the books in the shelves, at the sound- track rolls and reading machine bobbins in their numbered pigeon-holes. On the table under the window lay a massive volume bound in limp black leather- surrogate, and stamped with large golden Tâs. He picked it up and opened it. MY LIFE AND WORK, BY OUR FORD. The book had been published at Detroit by the Society for the Propagation of Fordian Knowledge. Idly he turned the pages, read a sentence here, a paragraph there, and had just come to the conclusion that the book didnât interest him, when the door opened, and the Resident World Controller for Western Europe walked briskly into the room. Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it was to the Savage that he addressed himself. âSo you donât much like civilization, Mr. Savage,â he said. The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by the good-humoured intelligence of the Controllerâs face, he decided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. âNo.â He sho- ok his head. 149 150 IDPH Bernard started and looked horriïŹed. What would the Controller think? To be labelled as the friend of a man who said that he didnât like civilization-said it openly and, of all people, to the Controller-it was terrible. âBut, John,â he began. A look from Mustapha Mond reduced him to an abject silence. âOf course,â the Savage went on to admit, âthere are some very nice things. All that music in the air, for instance .â âSometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and sometimes voices.â The Savageâs face lit up with a sudden pleasure. âHave you read it too?â he asked. âI thought nobody knew about that book here, in England.â âAlmost nobody. Iâm one of the very few. Itâs prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx,â he added, turning to Bernard. âWhich Iâm afraid you canât do.â Bernard sank into a yet more hopeless misery. âBut why is it prohibited?â asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else. The Controller shrugged his shoulders. âBecause itâs old; thatâs the chief reason. We havenât any use for old things here.â âEven when theyâre beautiful?â âParticularly when theyâre beautiful. Beautyâs attractive, and we donât want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.â âBut the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where thereâs nothing but helicopters ïŹying about and you feel the people kissing.â He ma- de a grimace. âGoats and monkeys!â Only in Othelloâs word could he ïŹnd an adequate vehicle for his contempt and hatred. âNice tame animals, anyhow,â the Controller murmured parenthetically. âWhy donât you let them see Othello instead?â âIâve told you; itâs old. Besides, they couldnât understand it.â Yes, that was true. He remembered how Helmholtz had laughed at Romeo and Juliet. âWell then,â he said, after a pause, âsomething new thatâs like Othello, and that they could understand.â âThatâs what weâve all been wanting to write,â said Helmholtz, breaking a long silence. âAnd itâs what you never will write,â said the Controller. âBecause, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And http://www.idph.net IDPH 151 if were new, it couldnât possibly be like Othello.â âWhy not?â âYes, why not?â Helmholtz repeated. He too was forgetting the unpleasant realities of the situation. Green with anxiety and apprehension, only Bernard remembered them; the others ignored him. âWhy not?â âBecause our world is not the same as Othelloâs world. You canât make ïŹiv- vers without steel-and you canât make tragedies without social instability. The worldâs stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they canât get. Theyâre well off; theyâre safe; theyâre never ill; theyâre not afraid of death; theyâre blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; theyâre plagued with no mothers or fathers; theyâve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; theyâre so conditioned that they practically canât help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, thereâs soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!â He laughed. âExpecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!â The Savage was silent for a little. âAll the same,â he insisted obstinately, âOthel- loâs good, Othelloâs better than those feelies.â âOf course it is,â the Controller agreed. âBut thatâs the price we have to pay for stability. Youâve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. Weâve sacriïŹced the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.â âBut they donât mean anything.â âThey mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audien- ce.â âBut theyâre. theyâre told by an idiot.â The Controller laughed. âYouâre not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Wat- son. One of our most distinguished Emotional Engineers .â âBut heâs right,â said Helmholtz gloomily. âBecause it is idiotic. Writing when thereâs nothing to say .â âPrecisely. But that require the most enormous ingenuity. Youâre making ïŹiv- vers out of the absolute minimum of steel-works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation.â The Savage shook his head. âIt all seems to me quite horrible.â âOf course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in compari- son with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isnât ne- http://www.idph.net 152 IDPH arly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good ïŹght against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.â âI suppose not,â said the Savage after a silence. âBut need it be quite so bad as those twins?â He passed his hand over his eyes as though he were trying to wipe away the remembered image of those long rows of identical midgets at the assembling tables, those queued-up twin-herds at the entrance to the Brentford monorail station, those human maggots swarming round Lindaâs bed of death, the endlessly repeated face of his assailants. He looked at his bandaged left hand and shuddered. âHorrible!â âBut how useful! I see you donât like our Bokanovsky Groups; but, I assure you, theyâre the foundation on which everything else is built. Theyâre the gy- roscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course.â The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of the irresistible machine. Mustapha Mondâs oratory was almost up to synthetic standards. âI was wondering,â said the Savage, âwhy you had them at all-seeing that you can get whatever you want out of those bottles. Why donât you make every- body an Alpha Double Plus while youâre about it?â Mustapha Mond laughed. âBecause we have no wish to have our throats cut,â he answered. âWe believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldnât fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas- that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and condi- tioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!â he repeated. The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully. âItâs an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work-go mad, or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized-but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacriïŹces, for the good reason that for him they arenât sacriïŹces; theyâre the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which heâs got to run. He canât help himself; heâs foredoomed. Even after decanting, heâs still inside a bottle-an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic ïŹxations. Each one of us, of course,â the Controller meditatively continued, âgoes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were conïŹned in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. Itâs obvious theoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice. The result http://www.idph.net IDPH 153 of the Cyprus experiment was convincing.â âWhat was that?â asked the Savage. Mustapha Mond smiled. âWell, you can call it an experiment in rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cle- ared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equip- ment was handed over to them and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result exactly fulïŹlled all the theoretical prediotions. The land wasnât pro- perly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high- grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years they were having a ïŹrst-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty- two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume the government of the island. Which they did. And that was the end of the only society of Alphas that the world has ever seen.â The Savage sighed, profoundly. âThe optimum population,â said Mustapha Mond, âis modelled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.â âAnd theyâre happy below the water line?â âHappier than above it. Happier than your friend here, for example.â He poin- ted. âIn spite of that awful work?â âAwful? They donât ïŹnd it so. On the contrary, they like it. Itâs light, itâs chil- dishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestric- ted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for? True,â he added, âthey might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shor- ter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldnât. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them. The In- ventions OfïŹce is stuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands of them.â Mustapha Mond made a lavish gesture. âAnd why donât we put them into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afïŹict them with excessive leisure. Itâs the same with agriculture. We could synthesize http://www.idph.net 154 IDPH every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we donât. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes-because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We donât want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. Thatâs another reason why weâre so chary of applying new inventions. Every disco- very in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science.â Science? The Savage frowned. He knew the word. But what it exactly signi- ïŹed he could not say. Shakespeare and the old men of the pueblo had never mentioned science, and from Linda he had only gathered
đ Science Under Control
đ§Ș Controlled science serves as a tool for maintaining social stability, deliberately limited to solving immediate problems while deeper inquiries are "carefully chained and muzzled"
đïž Those who pursue independent thought or question orthodoxy are exiled to islandsâa punishment that ironically connects them with the most interesting minds in society
âïž The system deliberately sacrifices truth and beauty for comfort and happiness, creating a society where scientific progress is subordinated to maintaining social equilibrium
đĄïž Religion and God are deemed unnecessary in a world engineered to eliminate suffering, solitude, and the conditions that make spiritual seeking meaningful
đ€ By removing all unpleasantness through conditioning and soma, society eliminates the very challenges that create nobility, heroism, and meaningful human experience
đ The ultimate cost of this engineered happiness is the loss of authentic humanityâwhere everything is pleasant but "nothing costs enough"
the vaguest hints: sci- ence was something you made helicopters with, some thing that caused you to laugh at the Corn Dances, something that prevented you from being wrin- kled and losing your teeth. He made a desperate effort to take the Controllerâs meaning. âYes,â Mustapha Mond was saying, âthatâs another item in the cost of stability. It isnât only art thatâs incompatible with happiness; itâs also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.â âWhat?â said Helmholtz, in astonishment. âBut weâre always saying that sci- ence is everything. Itâs a hypnopĂŠdic platitude.â âThree times a week between thirteen and seventeen,â put in Bemard. âAnd all the science propaganda we do at the College .â âYes; but what sort of science?â asked Mustapha Mond sarcastically. âYouâve had no scientiïŹc training, so you canât judge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good-good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobodyâs allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustnât be added to except by special permission from the head cook. Iâm the head cook now. But I was an inquisitive young scullion once. I started doing a bit of cooking on my own. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. A bit of real science, in fact.â He was silent. âWhat happened?â asked Helmholtz Watson. The Controller sighed. âVery nearly whatâs going to happen to you young men. I was on the point of being sent to an island.â The words galvanized Bernard into violent and unseemly activity. âSend me to an island?â He jumped up, ran across the room, and stood gesticulating in front of the Controller. âYou canât send me. I havenât done anything. lt was the others. I swear it was the others.â He pointed accusingly to Helmholtz and the Savage. âOh, please donât send me to Iceland. I promise Iâll do what I ought to do. Give me another chance. Please give me another chance.â The http://www.idph.net IDPH 155 tears began to ïŹow. âI tell you, itâs their fault,â he sobbed. âAnd not to Iceland. Oh please, your fordship, please .â And in a paroxysm of abjection he threw himself on his knees before the Controller. Mustapha Mond tried to make him get up; but Bernard persisted in his grovelling; the stream of words poured out inexhaustibly. In the end the Controller had to ring for his fourth secretary. âBring three men,â he ordered, âand take Mr. Marx into a bedroom. Give him a good soma vaporization and then put him to bed and leave him.â The fourth secretary went out and returned with three green-uniformed twin footmen. Still shouting and sobbing. Bernard was carried out. âOne would think he was going to have his throat cut,â said the Controller, as the door closed. âWhereas, if he had the smallest sense, heâd understand that his punishment is really a reward. Heâs being sent to an island. Thatâs to say, heâs being sent to a place where heâll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to ïŹt into community-life. All the people who arenât satisïŹed with orthodoxy, whoâve got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, whoâs any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson.â Helmholtz laughed. âThen why arenât you on an island yourself?â âBecause, ïŹnally, I preferred this,â the Controller answered. âI was given the choice: to be sent to an island, where I could have got on with my pure science, or to be taken on to the Controllersâ Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership. I chose this and let the science go.â After a little silence, âSometimes,â he added, âI rather regret the science. Happiness is a hard master-particularly other peopleâs happiness. A much harder master, if one isnât conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth.â He sighed, fell silent again, then continued in a brisker tone, âWell, dutyâs duty. One canât consult oneâs own preference. Iâm interested in truth, I like science. But truthâs a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as itâs been beneïŹcent. It has given us the stablest equilibrium in history. Chinaâs was hopelessly inse- cure by comparison; even the primitive matriarchies werenât steadier than we are. Thanks, l repeat, to science. But we canât allow science to undo its own good work. Thatâs why we so carefully limit the scope of its researches-thatâs why I almost got sent to an island. We donât allow it to deal with any but the most immediate problems of the moment. All other enquiries are most sedu- lously discouraged. Itâs curious,â he went on after a little pause, âto read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientiïŹc progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indeïŹnitely, regar- dless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning http://www.idph.net 156 IDPH to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and be- auty canât. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everytung, unrestricted scientiïŹc research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Yearsâ War. That made them change their tune all right. Whatâs the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science ïŹrst began to be controlled-after the Nine Yearsâ War. People were ready to have even their ap- petites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. Weâve gone on controlling ever since. It hasnât been very good for truth, of course. But itâs been very good for happiness. One canât have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. Youâre paying for it, Mr. Watson-paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.â âBut you didnât go to an island,â said the Savage, breaking a long silence. The Controller smiled. âThatâs how I paid. By choosing to serve happiness. Other peopleâs-not mine. Itâs lucky,â he added, after a pause, âthat there are such a lot of islands in the world. I donât know what we should do without them. Put you all in the lethal chamber, I suppose. By the way, Mr. Watson, would you like a tropical climate? The Marquesas, for example; or Samoa? Or something rather more bracing?â Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. âI should like a thoroughly bad cli- mate,â he answered. âI believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example .â The Controller nodded his approbation. âI like your spirit, Mr. Watson. I like it very much indeed. As much as I ofïŹcially disapprove of it.â He smiled. âWhat about the Falkland Islands?â âYes, I think that will do,â Helmholtz answered. âAnd now, if you donât mind, Iâll go and see how poor Bernardâs getting on.â http://www.idph.net Seventeen ART, SCIENCE-you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness,â said the Savage, when they were alone. âAnything else?â âWell, religion, of course,â replied the Controller. âThere used to be something called God-before the Nine Yearsâ War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose.â âWell .â The Savage hesitated. He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare. The Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side of the room and was unlocking a large safe set into the wall between the bookshelves. The heavy door swung open. Rummaging in the darkness within, âItâs a subject,â he said, âthat has always had a great interest for me.â He pulled out a thick black volu- me. âYouâve never read this, for example.â The Savage took it. âThe Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments,â he read aloud from the title-page. âNor this.â It was a small book and had lost its cover. âThe Imitation of Christ.â âNor this.â He handed out another volume. âThe Varieties of Religious Experience. By William James.â âAnd Iâve got plenty more,â Mustapha Mond continued, resuming his seat. âA whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves.â He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library-to the shelves of books, the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls. âBut if you know about God, why donât you tell them?â asked the Savage indignantly. âWhy donât you give them these books about God?â 157 158 IDPH âFor the same reason as we donât give them Othello: theyâre old; theyâre about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now.â âBut God doesnât change.â âMen do, though.â âWhat difference does that make?â âAll the difference in the world,â said Mustapha Mond. He got up again and walked to the safe. âThere was a man called Cardinal Newman,â he said. âA cardinal,â he exclaimed parenthetically, âwas a kind of Arch-Community- Songster.â ââI Pandulph, of fair Milan, cardinal.â Iâve read about them in Shakespeare.â âOf course you have. Well, as I was saying, there was a man called Cardinal Newman. Ah, hereâs the book.â He pulled it out. âAnd while Iâm about it Iâll take this one too. Itâs by a man called Maine de Biran. He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.â âA man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,â said the Savage promptly. âQuite so. Iâll read you one of the things he did dream of in a moment. Me- anwhile, listen to what this old Arch-Community-Songster said.â He opened the book at the place marked by a slip of paper and began to read. ââWe are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are Godâs property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way-to depend on no one-to ha- ve to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will ïŹnd that independen- ce was not made for man-that it is an unnatural state- will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end .ââ Mustapha Mond paused, put down the ïŹrst book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. âTake this, for example,â he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: ââA man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condi- tion is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has gi- http://www.idph.net IDPH 159 ven me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false-a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.ââ Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. âOne of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didnât dream about was thisâ (he waved his hand), âus, the modern world. âYou can only be independent of God while youâve got youth and prosperity; independence wonât take you safely to the end.â Well, weâve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. âThe religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.â But there arenât any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superïŹuous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?â âThen you think there is no God?â âNo, I think there quite probably is one.â âThen why? .â Mustapha Mond checked him. âBut he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being thatâs described in these books. Now .â âHow does he manifest himself now?â asked the Savage. âWell, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he werenât there at all.â âThatâs your fault.â âCall it the fault of civilization. God isnât compatible with machinery and sci- entiïŹc medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. Thatâs why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. Theyâre smut. People would be http://www.idph.net 160 IDPH shocked it .â The Savage interrupted him. âBut isnât it natural to feel thereâs a God?â âYou might as well ask if itâs natural to do up oneâs trousers with zippers,â said the Controller sarcastically. âYou remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He deïŹned philosophy as the ïŹnding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons-thatâs philosophy. People believe in God because theyâve been conditioned to. âBut all the same,â insisted the Savage, âit is natural to believe in God when youâre alone-quite alone, in the night, thinking about death .â âBut people never are alone now,â said Mustapha Mond. âWe make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that itâs almost impossible for them ever to have it.â The Savage nodded gloomily. At Malpais he had suffered because they had shut him out from the communal activities of the pueblo, in civilized London he was suffering because he could never escape from those communal activities, never be quietly alone. âDo you remember that bit in King Lear?â said the Savage at last. ââThe gods are just and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us; the dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes,â and Edmund answers-you remember, heâs wounded, heâs dying-âThou hast spoken right; âtis true. The wheel has come full circle; I am here.â What about that now? Doesnât there seem to be a God managing things, punishing, rewarding?â âWell, does there?â questioned the Controller in his turn. âYou can indulge in any number of pleasant vices with a freemartin and run no risks of having your eyes put out by your sonâs mistress. âThe wheel has come full circle; I am here.â But where would Edmund be nowadays? Sitting in a pneumatic chair, with his arm round a girlâs waist, sucking away at his sex- hormone chewing-gum and looking at the feelies. 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.â âAre you sure?â asked the Savage. âAre you quite sure that the Edmund in that pneumatic chair hasnât been just as heavily punished as the Edmund whoâs wounded and bleeding to death? The gods are just. Havenât they used his pleasant vices as an instrument to degrade him?â âDegrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working, goods- consuming citizen heâs perfect. Of course, if you choose some other standard http://www.idph.net IDPH 161 than ours, then perhaps you might say he was degraded. But youâve got to stick to one set of postulates. You canât play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.â âBut value dwells not in particular will,â said the Savage. âIt holds his estimate and dignity as well wherein âtis precious of itself as in the prizer.â âCome, come,â protested Mustapha Mond, âthatâs going rather far, isnât it?â âIf you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldnât allow yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. Youâd have a reason for bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage. Iâve seen it with the Indians.â âlâm sure you have,â said Mustapha Mond. âBut then we arenât Indians. There isnât any need for a civilized man to bear anything thatâs seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things-Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head. It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own.â âWhat about self-denial, then? If you had a God, youâd have a reason for self- denial.â âBut industrial civilization is only possible when thereâs no self-denial. Self- indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.â âYouâd have a reason for chastity!â said the Savage, blushing a little as he spoke the words. âBut chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You canât have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.â âBut Godâs the reason for everything noble and ïŹne and heroic. If you had a God .â âMy dear young friend,â said Mustapha Mond, âcivilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefïŹci- ency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegi- ances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended-there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there arenât any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. Thereâs no such thing as a divided allegiance; youâre so conditioned that you canât help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really arenât any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, http://www.idph.net 162 IDPH thereâs always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And thereâs always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you pati- ent 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-thatâs what soma is.â âBut the tears are necessary. Donât you remember what Othello said? âIf after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death.â Thereâs a story one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girl of MĂĄtaski. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morningâs ho- eing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were ïŹies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldnât stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could-he got the girl.â âCharming! But in civilized countries,â said the Controller, âyou can have girls without hoeing for them, and there arenât any ïŹies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago.â The Savage nodded, frowning. âYou got rid of them. Yes, thatâs just like you. Getting rid of everytfung unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether âtis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. But you donât do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. Itâs too easy.â He was suddenly silent, thinking of his mother. In her room on the thirty- se- venth ïŹoor, Linda had ïŹoated in a sea of singing lights and perfumed caresses- ïŹoated away, out of space, out of time, out of the prison of her memories, her habits, her aged and bloated body. And Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Tomakin was still on holiday-on holiday from humiliation and pain, in a world where he could not hear those words, that derisive laugh- ter, could not see that hideous face, feel those moist and ïŹabby arms round his neck, in a beautiful world. âWhat you need,â the Savage went on, âis something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.â (âTwelve and a half million dollars,â Henry Foster had protested when the Sa- vage told him that. âTwelve and a half million-thatâs what the new Conditio- ning Centre cost. Not a cent less.â) âExposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isnât there something in that?â he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. âQuite apart from God-though of course God would be a http://www.idph.net IDPH 163 reason for it. Isnât there something in living dangerously?â âThereâs a great deal in it,â the Controller replied. âMen and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.â âWhat?â questioned the Savage, uncomprehending. âItâs one of the conditions of perfect health. Thatâs why weâve made the V .P .S. treatments compulsory.â âV .P .S.?â âViolent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We ïŹood the whole sys- tem with adrenin. Itâs the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences.â âBut
đ Freedom vs. Comfort
đ Civilization offers comfort but demands conformity, while the đïž wilderness promises freedom but requires suffering and sacrifice
đ§ The Savage's rejection of modern society represents a profound đ existential choice - embracing pain, mortality, and spiritual struggle over engineered happiness
đš His self-imposed isolation and rituals of đȘ purification through physical suffering reveal the human need for meaning beyond mere pleasure
đ± When media discovers his retreat, his private rebellion becomes public spectacle, transforming his authentic spiritual journey into đ entertainment for the very society he rejected
đ„ The fundamental tension between personal freedom and societal control creates an impossible dilemma: true autonomy requires rejecting comfort, while comfort requires surrendering autonomy
đïž A lone figure faces an escalating crowd of curious tourists who transform from spectators into participants in a disturbing spectacle of voyeurism and violence
đ„ The crowd's chanting demand for "the whip" demonstrates how quickly collective behavior can spiral into a dehumanizing ritual, erasing individual moral boundaries
đ The arrival of a woman triggers intense emotions in the "Savage," culminating in a violent outburst that the crowd eagerly consumes as entertainment rather than tragedy
đ The horrific scene evolves into a ritualistic frenzy where observers become participants, mimicking violence in a disturbing display of conditioned group behavior
đȘą The ultimate suicide of the Savage reveals the devastating psychological toll of being reduced to a spectacle, highlighting the destructive power of dehumanization and mob psychology
around him on the heather. And from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers stepped men in white viscose-ïŹannels, women (for the weather was hot) in acetate-shantung pyjamas or velveteen shorts and sleeveless, half-unzippered singlets-one couple from each. In a few minutes there were dozens of them, standing in a wide circle round the lighthouse, staring, laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape) peanuts, packets of sex-hormone chewing- gum, pan-glanduar petite beurres. And every moment- for across the Hogâs Back the stream of trafïŹc now ïŹowed unceasingly- their numbers increased. As in a nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds. The Savage had retreated towards cover, and now, in the posture of an animal at bay, stood with his back to the wall of the lighthouse, staring from face to face in speechless horror, like a man out of his senses. From this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense of reality by the im- pact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet of chewing-gum. A shock of startling pain-and he was broad awake, awake and ïŹercely angry. âGo away!â he shouted. The ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter and hand-clapping. âGood old Savage! Hurrah, hurrah!â And through the babel he heard cries of: âWhip, whip, the whip!â http://www.idph.net 174 IDPH Acting on the wordâs suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted cords from its nail behind the door and shook it at his tormentors. There was a yell of ironical applause. Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood ïŹrm. The consciousness of being in overwhelming force had given these sight- seers a courage which the Savage had not expected of them. Taken aback, he halted and looked round. âWhy donât you leave me alone?â There was an almost plaintive note in his anger. âHave a few magnesium-salted almonds!â said the man who, if the Savage we- re to advance, would be the ïŹrst to be attacked. He held out a packet. âTheyâre really very good, you know,â he added, with a rather nervous smile of propita- tion. âAnd the magnesium salts will help to keep you young.â The Savage ignored his offer. âWhat do you want with me?â he asked, turning from one grinning face to another. âWhat do you want with me?â âThe whip,â answered a hundred voices confusedly. âDo the whipping stunt. Letâs see the whipping stunt.â Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, âWe-want-the whip,â shouted a group at the end of the line. âWe-want-the whip.â Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot- fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken. âWe-want- the whip.â They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours- almost indeïŹnitely. But at about the twenty-ïŹfth repetition the proceedings we- re startlingly interrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the Hogâs Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards of where the Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of sight- seers and the lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the shouting; then, as the machine touched the ground and the engines were tur- ned off: âWe-want-the whip; we- want-the whip,â broke out again in the same loud, insistent monotone. The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, ïŹrst a fair and ruddy- faced young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young woman. At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started, recoiled, turned pale. http://www.idph.net IDPH 175 The young woman stood, smiling at him-an uncertain, imploring, almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers. âWe-want-the whip! We-want-the whip!â The young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and on that peach- bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangely incongrous expressi- on of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick, impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Savage, stepped forward. âWe-want-the whip! We-want .â And all of a sudden they had what they wanted. âStrumpet!â The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. âFitchew!â Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords. TerriïŹed, she had turned to ïŹee, had tripped and fallen in the heather. âHenry, Henry!â she shouted. But her ruddy-faced companion had bolted out of harmâs way behind the helicopter. With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was a convergent stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction. Pain was a fascinating horror. âFry, lechery, fry!â Frenzied, the Savage slashed again. Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough. âOh, the ïŹesh!â The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders that the whip descended. âKill it, kill it!â Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, striking at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious ïŹesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the he- ather at his feet. âKill it, kill it, kill it .â The Savage went on shouting. Then suddenly somebody started singing âOrgy-porgyâ and, in a moment, they had all caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy- porgy. It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its ïŹight. StupeïŹed http://www.idph.net 176 IDPH by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered-everything. âOh, my God, my God!â He covered his eyes with his hand. That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing across the Hogâs Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. The description of last nightâs orgy of atonement had been in all the papers. âSavage!â called the ïŹrst arrivals, as they alighted from their machine. âMr. Savage!â There was no answer. The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher ïŹoors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet. âMr. Savage!â 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.. The copyright on this work has since expired, and since no renewals have been found at the U.S. Copyright OfïŹce, it is in the public domain in the United States. http://www.idph.net