Resumen Brave New World

Brave New World

Chapter 1
Brave New World occurs six hundred years in the future. The world has submitted to domination by World Controllers, whose primary goal is to ensure the stability and happiness of society. The underlying principle of the regime is utilitarianism, or maximizing the overall happiness of the society. The novel begins at the Central London Hatchery and ConditioningCenter, a production factory for human beings. A group of students receives a tour of the facilities by the Director.
The students view various machines and techniques used to promote the production and conditioning of embryos. The scientists take an ovary, remove and fertilize the eggs, force the eggs to bud up to ninety-six times, and subsequently grow the embryos in bottles. Predestinators thendecide the future function of each embryo within the society, essentially assigning a future job to each human.
The society contains a five-tiered caste system that ranks Alphas and Betas on top. Only the Alphas and Betas come from single eggs that are not budded and hence have no twins. The Centre conditions all the non-Alpha and Beta embryos for their future status in society by dividing them intoGammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Thus, the Alphas represent the intellectually superior group, followed by the Betas, and continuing down to the Epsilons, who have little to no intelligence.
Analysis:
The idea of totalitarian social stability occurs first in this chapter. While few critics have called the governmental regime "totalitarian" in nature, Huxley explicitly describes it as such. Huxleystated in Brave New World Revisited that the only way to create a permanently stable society is for a totalitarian regime to have absolute power. The regime must then ensure that people are happy all the time, be able to control the behavior of each individual, and ensure that independent thinkers are forbidden from disturbing the social fabric.
Huxley creates a society that frowns on individualcreativity and that only welcomes those who conform. The social motto "Community, Identity, Stability" frames this social structure. Huxley generates "community" by dividing the population into segments, where the Alphas serve as intellectual superiors and Epsilons function as pure menial labor. Huxley shows how "identity" comes from the Conditioning Centre through the selection of the embryos intoeach of five groups. "Stability" occurs through the limitations placed on the intelligence of each group.
The fundamental tenet behind the society is utilitarianism, which describes a society that seeks to create the maximum happiness. Limiting the intelligence of each person to fit their future job is one way this society makes them happy. Thus, Alphas receive challenging jobs and Epsilonsreceive grunt work that would be boring for higher caste members. Social conditioning and stunted development maximizes each person’s happiness. The goal of utilitarianism is to make the society "happier" and thus more efficient. The society described by Huxley is therefore a "utilitarian totalitarianism."
Chapter 2
Summary:
The students continue their tour of the Central London Hatchery andConditioning Centre. They watch "Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning," a technique that trains infants. Here, the use of electric shocks and sirens in response to touching roses or books modifies the behavior of Deltas. This discourages behavior that might destabilize society, such as allowing Deltas to read books and acquire knowledge. The students also view a group of sleeping infants who receive moralinstruction through hypnopaedic learning as they sleep. Sleeping babies listen to repeated catchphrases, and in this chapter, infant Betas listen to a tape played hundreds of times which indoctrinates them to believe they are superior to Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, but not as clever as Alphas.
Analysis:
Huxley reveals some of the main sources of social stability. Science creates and conditions...