Brave New World

From the novel’s second sentence, in which we are given the motto of the World State, “Community, Identity, Stability” (3), the theme of stability and how it can be achieved in a society is apparent. As the novel continues through the first and second chapters, in which the society is explained obliquely through the tour the Director is giving, we see that the World State’s conception of stability is founded in great part upon uniformity. Bokanovsky’s process, by which one fertilized egg can be multiplied as much as 96 times, becomes the only sanctioned means of procreation, meaning that the vast majority of the population has thousands of nearly-identical twins. Another aspect of this stability comes from conditioning its citizens, through scientific means while still in the uterus-replacing “bottles,” as well as “neo-pavlovian” and hypnopaedic means after they are “decanted, to be perfectly suited to and content with their role within society. This also means restricting access to books, learning, and history” (4). As the Director says early on, “For of course, some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently—though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible” (4).