Brave New World Summary Essay

Brave New World starts in the year 2495 at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, a place for research and a factory that produces and then socially-conditions test-tube babies. The date is 632 After Ford, this year being based on the year of birth of Henry Ford (1863), the well known car manufacturer and assembly line creator who is seen like the god in this fictional society.
Five castes or classes exist. They are the first five letters of the Greek alphabet: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Upper castes are the more intellectual castes and the lower castes are less intelligent members of society and they tend to perform manual labor. Everyone is conditioned by electric shock and hypnopaedia to reject or desire what the State wishes and decides. For example, infants are taught to hate flowers and books, but encouraged to seek out new products, sex and entertainment in general. Most importantly, they are conditioned to be happiest with their own caste (group) and to be glad they are not a member of any other group. For instance, while eighty Beta children sleep on their cots in the Conditioning Centre, there are speakers with a voice explaining why being a beta is better than being a member of any other caste.
The story starts in the Hatchery’s employee locker room where Lenina Crowne, a Beta, talks about men with another female worker, Fanny Crowne. They talk about Bernard Marx, an Alpha-Plus who is thought of as abnormally short, thought to be from an overdose of alcohol added to the “blood surrogate” surrounding his embryo during development. Generally thought of as melancholic and antisocial, he is unusually withdrawn and depressed, despite regular doses of Soma, a drug that induces happiness and euphoria. Still, in spite Bernard’s oddness, Lenina finds him attractive and wants to date him. Lenina had been going out with the Centre’s research specialist, Henry Foster, for four months— this being considered as an abnormally long...