Brave New World CHAPTERS 4&5

At the beginning of Chapter 4, we begin to see why Bernard Marx, has garnered such a “bad reputation.” Bernard has a bad reputation because he exhibits many of the traits of a normal person, unlike most of the other people in this Brave New World.

Henry and Lenina get on a helicopter, while they are doing this the story takes into account the boring nature of the job left to the liftman, who is an “Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron” by making him repeat “roof” over and over as they both reach their destination.

Lenina and Henry get on the rocket, which is being guided by Henry.
The story then goes into detail some of the psychological issues behind Bernard’s lack of self confidence, and his lack of “Alpha level physique.”

We then learn that this Brave New World has different newspapers for different classes.

The Hourly Radio, is propaganda for the upper castes.
Gamma Gazette, is propaganda for the middle castes.
The Delta Mirror, is propaganda for the lower castes.

Bernard then gets in his helicopter and goes to pick up his friend Helmholtz Watson, who works as a lecturer at The College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing).

At the beginning of Chapter 5, at the obstacle golf course Lenina and Henry start to talk about the smoke stacks, which are major landmarks in London, and Lenina asks Henry why the smoke stacks, ““…have those thing like balconies around them?”” Henry answers her question by saying that those smoke stacks are actually for “phosphorus Recovery”, when dead bodies are cremated, the phosphorus produced from the body is used to fertilize plants.

What I think about this is that in this Brave New World efficiency is everything and it is the type of world in which you will only be allowed to live, unless you serve a useful function for the state. I also remember that efficiency was an argument used to justify things such as Eugenics.

After that Lenina then goes to an Opera, where they intend to listen to synthetic music.

After that they walk into the night as Lenina takes a gamme of soma.

After this we see that Bernard takes a taxi, to the Fordson Community Singery, while on the taxi he passes a giant clock named Big Henry.


At the singery he runs into a strange woman named Morgana Rothschild, who strangely has a unibrown.

Here is a link to the family who Huxley got Morgana's last name from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family

He then joins a group of people who are sitting around a table, they then make a T sign, and begin to pass around a cup of “strawberry ice-cream soma, with a formula.

“I drink to my annihilation.” pg. 60

At the end they apparently do a weird ritual and people then begin to hallucinate and go into a drunken, drugged euphoric state of dancing and screaming.