It is also here that their caste designation determines how much oxygen they will receive in their bottle. "The lower the caste, the shorter the oxygen." The lower caste Epsilons are oxygen deprived because for the labours they are destined to perform, they will not need human intelligence.
The "Bokanovskified", pre-sexed, caste designated embryos are then taken out of storage when needed and "decanted" where as children, they are subjected immediately to sleep learning tapes on the "conditioning wards". Hour after hour as they sleep, the children receive sleep reinforcement of their social caste designation. As they mature, they naturally assume the responsibilities and the rules of their castes. Very few question, as their caste is assigned from birth. If they do, they are exiled to an island (usually Iceland) where their questioning can't contaminate others.
Thus, the society is stable and unquestioning. Identical genetic material, rigidly enforced social caste using oxygen deprivation and sleep tapes for brainwashing. Everyone easily fulfils society's obligations and there are few surprises. If things should get stressful for any reason, there's always the wonder drug "soma". If anything goes wrong, there's always the "soma holiday" from life. Most of the Epsilon workers are paid in "soma" tablets to keep them happy. It wouldn't do to have an unhappy workforce. Leisure time is often spent at the "feelies", a movie theatre where the emotions and responses of the actors can actually be experienced.
But not everyone belongs to this society. Some places there are reservations, where an Indian tribe lives. They have their own culture, with worshipping of a mix between Jesus and some old Indian gods.
And in this story we meet 4 persons. Bernhard Marx, Lenina Crowne, Helmholtz Watson and the savage John.
Bernhard and Helmholtz are "thinkers". They haven't conformed properly. They actually do some thinking of their own. Bernhard is also peculiar in the respect that he is not of the average height as his class. There are rumours that there was put some alcohol in his bottle when he was on the embryo stadium. On the other hand we have Lenina, a girl just doing her job, taking her soma, and having her sex.
She and Bernhard goes to the reservation in New Mexico for their holidays, and meet the savage John. He is the son of the director of the London hatchery. His mother was also there on her holidays, but she got lost, and stayed there. So the young John learned to read, and he has read a lot of Shakespeares plays.
They bring John and his mother back to England. After meeting a lot of problems in his new society, and when both Bernhard and Helmhotz are sent away, he finally tries to escape, and he runs off, and goes to a lighthouse. After some months he is seen whipping himself. This causes a lot of people to come there and see, and John looses his mind, and attacks Lenina, whom he had fallen in love with. That night he and the many other people there had a long orgie, and he even took some soma. When even more people came back the next evening, he had committed suicide, and he hung inside his lighthouse.
John, the savage, has been a loner all his life. He was not accepted in the Indian society, and the only comfort he had was his mother (an alcoholic) and Shakespear. And through his childhood his mother told him lots of stories of the Utopian society she thought the "outer" world was. When he came there, he found that this Utopia was nothing like what he had expected. People thought they had the best society ever (people always think that, don't they?), but John saw through all this and saw the realities. People weren't free, they were trapped by their own minds and their sleep-conditioning. John felt very disappointed. He also was truly disappointed over his mothers decay when she came back to "civilisation". She started using Soma, and took very large doses. And after a very short while she died. John truly started to dislike the civilised society after this. And when Helmholtz and Bernhard, his only true friends, were exiled, he turned his back on society, and decided to leave society.
But our new reproductive technologies have, luckily, yielded us nothing like the society of Brave New World, but the stage has been set for a future which could be every bit as chilling and oppressive. We have the technology to "sex select" or predetermine. The poor of all countries slip closer to Epsilon status, deprived not of oxygen, but of financial, educational, nutritional and political resources. Where we go from here depends on how much we educate ourselves as a society, and which of these technologies we allow to bear their bitter fruit. At least we don't have soma as a method of social control ... but then again, we do have Prozac!
