Brave New World Identity Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Part.Paragraph)

Quote #4

And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summer's afternoon. The bulging flanks of row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes and all the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery faintly stirred the air. (1.52)

The image of sheer mass production comes across here perhaps more than anywhere else in Brave New World. The creepy red light business adds to the reader's discomfort, and even the individuals working in the room are altered by its color (hence Lenina having purple eyes and coral teeth).

Quote #5

Told them of the test for sex carried out in the neighborhood of Metre 200. Explained the system of labelling—a T for the males, a circle for the females and for those who were destined to become freemartins a question mark, black on a white ground. (1.64)

Like age, sex can be an ambiguous element of identity in Brave New World.

Quote #6

Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.

"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too—all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides—made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!" The Director almost shouted in his triumph. "Suggestions from the State." He banged the nearest table. "It therefore follows…" (2.85-6)

Here is some insight as to why "Identity" is part of the World State's Motto. Individual identity may be erased, but through conditioning, a new, communal identity can be written over it.