BRAVE NEW WORLD (I)

Looking at the forward I think that Aldous Huxley did in fact see his vision of a future Brave New World as accelerating. I don’t want to spoil the story but I am wondering if this forward is taken from an essay that Huxley wrote several years after writing this book, titled Brave New World Revisited.

Before delving into the story, like a person doing a cannonball into a pool, I would like to state a few facts about Huxley’s style of writing. Many people call this brand of literature, a dystopian novel, Utopian fiction, or “anti-Utopian” novel. Huxley does in fact follow in the great tradition of authors who wanted to imagine something different, a different course for man then the one in which they were heading towards when the writers were alive. Some of these famous dystopian novelists are Plato, Sir Thomas Moore, George Orwell, Ignatius Donnelley, H.G Wells, B.F Skinner, C.S Lewis, Edward Bellemy, and Ray Bradbury.

Let us then begin walking the road to Tyre:

The story begins at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and the motto for the world state is COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. The setting of this novel in London, in the year 632 of our Ford.

First of all from this I can infer that the world at this time has a global government, no more states making war with each other, they might have embraced the rational model propagated by the United Nations. This world state has a socialist economic model, and a “benevolent totalitarian” political model.
I can’t help myself and compare the motto of the world state to that of Orwell’s “three slogans of the party” which are

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Here is a link to 1984, the e-book:
http://ia701208.us.archive.org/13/items/1984ByGeorgeOrwell_167/1984.pdf

I also cant help myself by, again, comparing the setting of Orwell s book, and Huxley’s. Orwell's, 1984 took place in London, and Orwell's political model was also a socialist, but it was not a world state, rather the geopolitical order, in 1984, consisted of of three regional superstates who were always at war with each other.

Getting back to the story, it appears like it is in fact a nursery factory were embryos are produced and several thousand people are made out of each embryo, this process is called "Bokanovsky's Process." The director is the head executive of that nursery, and he is giving a tour to students of his hatching facility.

The human factory appears to be a massive facility, were scientists, who were produced from the same embryos, work as scientists. Also the batches of embryos are bred and scientifically prepared for the specific job that they will do, once they are fully grown. This tells me that this society has a rigid caste system, were there is no advancement of no opportunity for advancement, which would make it a highly stratified culture."He was going to say "future World controllers," but correcting himself, said "future Directors of Hatcheries,"" pg.10

The director is a member of the Alpha class, and his students are also preparing to be directors of their own hatcheries after they learn how to manage a facility, like the director. From the quote on pg. 10, it appears like they are the rulers of this Brave New World.

Another quote which I would like to analyze is "The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course." on pg. 9, here I think that Huxley was commenting on the increasing use of hormones in most foods that are having a negative side effect on the health of millions of people worldwide, after this quote, this sentence appears, "they're decanted as freemartins structurally quite normal (except," he had to admit,"that they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards)." pg. 9 here I think that Huxley was actually predicting one of the social movements that was to occur nearly fifty years after he wrote Brave New World. The Women's Liberation Movement, (better known as Feminism) actually began to demand equal treatment from a society that before then had been a patriarchal one. As this occurred sexual roles began to change, and women began to work in areas that were traditionally reserved for men. Thus the quote about women beginning to grow beards, actually parallels an event that was to come soon after Brave New World was written which actually makes you think of how accurate some of Huxley's predictions were, and how they are quickly fulfilling themselves all around us.

The caste system goes like this in Brave New World, in order of importance there is the Alphas, the Betas, the Gammas, the Deltas, and the Epsilons. Their symbols, respectfully are, α,  β, γ, δ, and ε. Which are all Greek letters.

The outline of the city of London is very intricate and so far I have read that they describe their location by "Metre." By this term I believe that since the Brave New World version of the future might be crowded enough, that architects would need to build upwards, into the sky.

At the end of chapter two, it appears as if the directer and one of his assistant scientists, "Mr Foster" are showing the students around one of the labs where people are engineered to be inferior (epsilons), or conditioned for the job they will do in the world state once they develop into adults. It ends with the directer allowing Mr. Foster and his students take a "glance" at the lab where the Alpha Intellectuals are about to undergo "intellectual conditioning".