A Brave New World Notes: Chapter 1 and 2

Chapter 1:
Setting is in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center. Opens with children getting a tour of a factory where humans are "made" where their roles are predetermined to fit into the World State. Humans no longer go through traditional birthing of off springs. They are now done surgically and through test tubes. The process decides what caste the human undergoes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon.  "Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon undergo the Bokanovsky Process, which involves shocking an egg so that it divides to form up to ninety-six identical embryos, which then develop into ninety-six identical human beings." in other words, they take one egg to construct clones to all perform one particular job that are predetermined as well. Cloning is only one factor that demonstrates the World State's motto: “Community, Identity, Stability.”  Podsnap’s Technique speeds up the rate of fertilizing egg and sperm, making it able to produce hundreds of identical humans within a short amount of time. This particular factory holds a record of 16,000 siblings. Fetuses undergo different conditions in their artificial womb (more like a simulation within a test tube) to better prepare them for the job they will be performing. For example, A worker who will be in a hot climate is heat conditioned in the embryo. The director (also the tour leader) explains that this process ultimately makes “their inescapable social destiny.” Otherwise saying the humans whole lives, traits, physical appearance, almost ever aspect of their identity is predetermined and done through scientific experimentation almost completely stripping them of every unique quality to make society 'all the same' or to 'fit the system.'

Chapter 2:
The tour leads to the nursery where babies are being tested. There's a group of babies being shown flowers and books (these humans are of the lower caste). When they start to travel towards the books/flowers, they are suddenly shocked. They repeat this test except this time the babies rush away. The director explains they do this so the lower class humans will not 'waist their time reading' as they are not fit for such a knowledgeable job. more recently, they have taught babies to hate nature becsue its free. Instead they make the babies like sports so they buy/travel equipment in order to participate to make money. Also, now words like mother and father are now considered pornographic and are frowned upon being used. One night, a student was diagnosed with a condition (sleep teaching, or hypnopaedia) that allowed him to listen to the radio, remember all that was said, and recite it back. But he had no idea what he was saying. This proved  that intellectual teaching was basically pointless. They believe that hypnopaedia was a moral thing. The next thing they see in the tour is another set of Beta babies being whispered to over and over and over again of their role sin society. It's stating that each set of caste will have to work most up to the intellectuals who don't work as hard. This impressed their job and their mind to accept their hand picked fate in the world.  Hypnopaedia, the Director concludes, is “the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time.”