Quote 1
"Reducing the number of revolutions per minute," Mr. Foster explained. "The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par." Again he rubbed his hands.
[…]
"The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters. (1.70-4)
Science is being abused here for purposes of harm; notice that this new world hasn't made smarter men to fill the role of Alphas; it has simply degraded everyone else.
Quote 2
Henry Foster had had his machine wheeled out of its lock-up and, when Lenina arrived, was already seated in the cockpit, waiting.
"Four minutes late," was all his comment, as she climbed in beside him.
[…]
"There's the Red Rocket," said Henry, "just come in from New York." Looking at his watch. "Seven minutes behind time," he added, and shook his head. (4.1.29-32)
Henry's character reflects an obsession with exactitude in the new world.
Quote 3
"Phosphorus recovery," explained Henry telegraphically. "On their way up the chimney the gases go through four separate treatments. P2O5 used to go right out of circulation every time they cremated someone. Now they recover over ninety-eight per cent of it. More than a kilo and a half per adult corpse. Which makes the best part of four hundred tons of phosphorus every year from England alone." Henry spoke with a happy pride, rejoicing whole-heartedly in the achievement, as though it had been his own. "Fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we're dead. Making plants grow." (5.1.5)
Science has dehumanized even death. Henry's admiration of this process reflects how deeply ingrained is the lesson that individuals exist only to serve the community.
Quote 4
"Lenina Crowne?" said Henry Foster, echoing the Assistant Predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. "Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her."
"I can't think how it is I haven't," said the Assistant Predestinator. "I certainly will. At the first opportunity."
From his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle, Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale. (3.118-20)
This is where we start to like Bernard. He seems to be the only character who shares our reaction to this shockingly promiscuous world.
Quote 5
"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred— that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they're decanted as freemartins—structurally quite normal (except," he had to admit, "that they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last," continued Mr. Foster, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention." (1.65)
The World State controls its citizens by controlling their fertility— but this makes it clear that to have this kind of power over an individual is to strip that individual of her humanity. Having children, after all, is one of the most fundamentally natural processes of human life.
Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miner and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. "We condition them to thrive on heat," concluded Mr. Foster. "Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it."
"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny." (1.87-8)
Right off the bat, we have to start questioning the way in which the Director and others define "happiness" in this world. Is being "content" the same as being "happy"? If you have no choice about it, if this emotion is the default, can we still think of it as true "happiness"?
Quote 7
"But, my dear chap, you're welcome, I assure you. You're welcome." Henry Foster patted the Assistant Predestinator on the shoulder. "Every one belongs to every one else, after all."
One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopædia. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots! (3.149-50)
The hypnopaedic platitude "Every one belongs to every one else" is a great example of the sort of confinement we see in Brave New World. No one can be free because everyone is subject to the desires and urges of every other person. How can you have freedom when you're considered property? The fact that everyone is both master and slave is one of the horrifying, cyclical traps of this system.
Quote 8
"Lenina Crowne?" said Henry Foster, echoing the Assistant Predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. "Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her."
"I can't think how it is I haven't," said the Assistant Predestinator. "I certainly will. At the first opportunity."
From his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle, Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale. (3.118-20)
Bernard's dissatisfaction with the status quo stems first from emotions: he feels things that others simply don't.