The novel opens in
the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the Director
of the Hatchery and one of his assistants, Henry Foster, are giving
a tour to a group of boys. The boys learn about the Bokanovsky and
Podsnap Processes that allow the Hatchery to produce thousands of
nearly identical human embryos. During the gestation period the
embryos travel in bottles along a conveyor belt through a factorylike
building, and are conditioned to belong to one of five castes: Alpha,
Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. The Alpha embryos are destined to
become the leaders and thinkers of the World State. Each of the
succeeding castes is conditioned to be slightly less physically
and intellectually impressive. The Epsilons, stunted and stupefied
by oxygen deprivation and chemical treatments, are destined to perform
menial labor. Lenina Crowne, an employee at the factory, describes
to the boys how she vaccinates embryos destined for tropical climates.
The Director then leads the boys to the Nursery, where
they observe a group of Delta infants being reprogrammed to dislike books
and flowers. The Director explains that this conditioning helps
to make Deltas docile and eager consumers. He then tells the boys
about the “hypnopaedic” (sleep-teaching) methods used to teach children
the morals of the World State. In a room where older children are
napping, a whispering voice is heard repeating a lesson in “Elementary
Class Consciousness.”
Outside, the Director shows the boys hundreds of naked
children engaged in sexual play and games like “Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.”
Mustapha Mond, one of the ten World Controllers, introduces himself
to the boys and begins to explain the history of the World State,
focusing on the State’s successful efforts to remove strong emotions,
desires, and human relationships from society. Meanwhile, inside
the Hatchery, Lenina chats in the bathroom with Fanny Crowne about
her relationship with Henry Foster. Fanny chides Lenina for going
out with Henry almost exclusively for four months, and Lenina admits
she is attracted to the strange, somewhat funny-looking Bernard
Marx. In another part of the Hatchery, Bernard is enraged when he
overhears a conversation between Henry and the Assistant Predestinator
about “having” Lenina.
After work, Lenina tells Bernard that she would be happy
to accompany him on the trip to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico
to which he had invited her. Bernard, overjoyed but embarrassed,
flies a helicopter to meet a friend of his, Helmholtz Watson. He
and Helmholtz discuss their dissatisfaction with the World State. Bernard
is primarily disgruntled because he is too small and weak for his
caste; Helmholtz is unhappy because he is too intelligent for his
job writing hypnopaedic phrases. In the next few days, Bernard asks
his superior, the Director, for permission to visit the Reservation.
The Director launches into a story about a visit to the Reservation
he had made with a woman twenty years earlier. During a storm, he
tells Bernard, the woman was lost and never recovered. Finally,
he gives Bernard the permit, and Bernard and Lenina depart for the
Reservation, where they get another permit from the Warden. Before
heading into the Reservation, Bernard calls Helmholtz and learns
that the Director has grown weary of what he sees as Bernard’s difficult
and unsocial behavior and is planning to exile Bernard to Iceland
when he returns. Bernard is angry and distraught, but decides to
head into the Reservation anyway.
On the Reservation, Lenina and Bernard are shocked to
see its aged and ill residents; no one in the World State has visible
signs of aging. They witness a religious ritual in which a young
man is whipped, and find it abhorrent. After the ritual they meet
John, a fair-skinned young man who is isolated from the rest of
the village. John tells Bernard about his childhood as the son of
a woman named Linda who was rescued by the villagers some twenty
years ago. Bernard realizes that Linda is almost certainly the woman
mentioned by the Director. Talking to John, he learns that Linda
was ostracized because of her willingness to sleep with all the
men in the village, and that as a result John was raised in isolation
from the rest of the village. John explains that he learned to read
using a book called The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning
of the Embryo and The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the
latter given to Linda by one of her lovers, Popé. John tells Bernard
that he is eager to see the “Other Place”—the “brave new world”
that his mother has told him so much about. Bernard invites him
to return to the World State with him. John agrees but insists that
Linda be allowed to come as well.
While Lenina, disgusted with the Reservation, takes enough soma to
knock her out for eighteen hours, Bernard flies to Santa Fe where
he calls Mustapha Mond and receives permission to bring John and
Linda back to the World State. Meanwhile, John breaks into
the house where Lenina is lying intoxicated and unconscious, and barely
suppresses his desire to touch her. Bernard, Lenina, John, and Linda
fly to the World State, where the Director is waiting to exile Bernard
in front of his Alpha coworkers. But Bernard turns the tables by introducing
John and Linda. The shame of being a “father”—the very word makes
the onlookers laugh nervously—causes the Director to resign, leaving
Bernard free to remain in London.
John becomes a hit with London society because of his
strange life led on the Reservation. But while touring the factories
and schools of the World State, John becomes increasingly disturbed
by the society that he sees. His sexual attraction to Lenina remains,
but he desires more than simple lust, and he finds himself terribly
confused. In the process, he also confuses Lenina, who wonders why John
does not wish to have sex with her. As the discoverer and guardian
of the “Savage,” Bernard also becomes popular. He quickly takes
advantage of his new status, sleeping with many women and hosting
dinner parties with important guests, most of whom dislike Bernard
but are willing to placate him if it means they get to meet John. One
night John refuses to meet the guests, including the Arch-Community
Songster, and Bernard’s social standing plummets.
After Bernard introduces them, John and Helmholtz quickly
take to each other. John reads Helmholtz parts of Romeo
and Juliet, but Helmholtz cannot keep himself from laughing
at a serious passage about love, marriage, and parents—ideas that
are ridiculous, almost scatological in World State culture.
Fueled by his strange behavior, Lenina becomes obsessed
with John, refusing Henry’s invitation to see a feely. She takes soma and visits
John at Bernard’s apartment, where she hopes to seduce him. But
John responds to her advances with curses, blows, and lines from
Shakespeare. She retreats to the bathroom while he fields a phone
call in which he learns that Linda, who has been on permanent soma-holiday
since her return, is about to die. At the Hospital for the Dying
he watches her die while a group of lower-caste boys receiving their
“death conditioning” wonder why she is so unattractive. The boys
are simply curious, but John becomes enraged. After Linda dies,
John meets a group of Delta clones who are receiving their soma ration.
He tries to convince them to revolt, throwing the soma out
the window, and a riot results. Bernard and Helmholtz, hearing of
the riot, rush to the scene and come to John’s aid. After the riot
is calmed by police with soma vapor, John, Helmholtz,
and Bernard are arrested and brought to the office of Mustapha Mond.
John and Mond debate the value of the World State’s policies, John
arguing that they dehumanize the residents of the World State and
Mond arguing that stability and happiness are more important than
humanity. Mond explains that social stability has required the sacrifice
of art, science, and religion. John protests that, without these
things, human life is not worth living. Bernard reacts wildly when
Mond says that he and Helmholtz will be exiled to distant islands,
and he is carried from the room. Helmholtz accepts the exile readily,
thinking it will give him a chance to write, and soon follows Bernard
out of the room. John and Mond continue their conversation. They
discuss religion and the use of soma to control
negative emotions and social harmony.
John bids Helmholtz and Bernard good-bye. Refused the
option of following them to the islands by Mond, he retreats to
a lighthouse in the countryside where he gardens and attempts to
purify himself by self-flagellation. Curious World State citizens
soon catch him in the act, and reporters descend on the lighthouse
to film news reports and a feely. After the feely, hordes of people
descend on the lighthouse and demand that John whip himself. Lenina
comes and approaches John with her arms open. John reacts by brandishing
his whip and screaming “Kill it! Kill it!” The intensity of the
scene causes an orgy in which John takes part. The next morning
he wakes up and, overcome with anger and sadness at his submission
to World State society, hangs himself.
