Brave new world

Brave new world so far has proven to be an aptly named book. It starts out introducing a world that is astoundingly new to the reader. This world has a caste system including 5 different levels, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. At the start of the book the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is giving a tour to a group of new students at a Hatchery and Conditioning center. The Director explains to the students that the center uses the Bokanovsky Process to create 96 identical humans beings from one embryo. The reader finds out that babies are grown and conditioned in a "factory" and that viviparous living is a baffling idea to citizens in the World State. The reason for the 96 identical twins is so that everyone but the Alphas and the Betas (Bokanovsky Process weakens the egg so it would never be done to them) could more effectively do their jobs, and to create a stable society. The World State's motto is therefore also aptly named: Community, Identity, Stability. Podsnaps technique is another method introduced to us by the Director. Apparently it can speed up the ripening process of the egg in one ovary and can produce up to 16,000 siblings in batches of identical twins from one ovary.

The Director goes on to describe how the embryos travel on a conveyor belt for 267 days and on the last day they are decanted. The Director explains in detail the extreme conditioning some of the embyos may go through. The conveyor belt may shake at certain intervals to simulate movement, some embyos may be treated with alchohal or oxygen deprivation to ensure it fits into a lower intelligene and physical stature caste. Rocket-plane engineers would be kept in constant motion, and chemists would be made immune to toxic chemicals. Furthurmore some embyos destined to work in tropical climates are condition to be physically and emotionally dependant on heat in order, in the Directors words, for them to accept their inescapable social destiny.

The dystopian similarites between the first chapters of Brave New World and 1984 are very clear. The extreme conditioning in order for people to accept their "inescapable social conditioning" remind me of the conditioning that goes on in Orwell's novel. Big Brother wants to erase all knowledge of the past in order to condition everyone born. The reason is that if no one knows about the past, they will "inescapeably" be conditioned to accept and love Big Brother.