Brave New World Chapter 6: Part 3 Summary

  • Lenina and Bernard fly to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The hotel room is awesome, since it has television, liquid air (?), and "hot contraceptives." (We don't even want to know.)
  • Lenina says that "progress is lovely." Bernard responds that this is a phrase repeated five hundred times a week between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. All in all, a typical exchange between the two.
  • Bernard warns her that there aren't going to be any luxuries on the Reservation, so she'd better prepare herself for it.
  • The next morning the pair presents their permit card to the Reservation Warden, an Alpha-Minus. He proceeds to pelt them with useless facts about the Reservation.
  • Meanwhile, Bernard remembers that he left the tap in the bathroom running; not the water tap, but the Eau de Cologne tap. Shoot, he thinks, this will cost a fortune.
  • Lenina, who has taken half a gram of soma, has no idea what the Warden is talking about as he describes the voltage of the electric fence. But she "oohs" and "ahhs" anyway.
  • The Warden makes it clear that, with this electric fence, no one can "escape" from the Reservation. Hmm.
  • Bernard tries to hurry everything up (so he can go shut the tap off), but the Warden holds him back while lecturing about the Reservation's horrors (people are born here! Eww).
  • Basically, the world of the Reservation that the Warden describes is much like ours.
  • Bernard finally gets to a phone and calls Helmholtz to have him turn off the tap. Helmholtz then reveals that the Director is looking for someone to take Bernard's place. In other words, Iceland is waiting for Bernard.
  • Bernard is stunned. He had once hoped for some great pain to afflict him so that he could feel what it was like to face it without soma. But now that such a persecution has come to him, he sees that he has no courage to face it after all. He desperately regrets angering the Director.
  • Lenina finally convinces him to take four tablets of soma, which is a lot. (Half a gram, or one tablet, will get you high.)
  • Then she and Bernard get into a plane and cross over the border, into the Reservation. They pass by the aforementioned electric fence, surrounded by the bones of animals that "never learn" from seeing others electrocuted.

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  • Bernard laughs at this. Because it's funny? No, because he's taken four soma tablets. Then he promptly falls asleep again, not because he's tired, but because, well, you get the point. He sleeps through most of the air tour and wakes up when they land.
  • Bernard and Lenina are dropped at the "rest-house" inside the Reservation and assured that the savages won't do them any harm (because they're used to getting GAS BOMBED if they do).