Brave New World Science Quotes

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

Quote #1

The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables. (1.2)

Science has sterilized what would otherwise be natural human life. Even light, a product of the natural world, has been deadened by this controlled environment.

Quote #2

"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. "These," he waved his hand, "are the incubators." And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. "The week's supply of ova. Kept," he explained, "at blood heat; whereas the male gametes," and here he opened another door, "they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes." Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs. (1.9)

Here begins a key feature of the way science is presented in Brave New World: horrifying precision. A mere two degrees of temperature separates male gametes from female ones, yet this difference is exact and crucial.

Quote #3

In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity. Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had only to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and before the lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endless band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of that slow interminable procession on the band. (1.32)

The mechanized process of the bottles at this stage of the novel parallels what we see later to be the mechanized actions of fully adult humans.