A Brave New World

Chapters 1-2: Discussion Questions

1. What is the setting of the book or, at least, these chapters?  Do you find any importance in this?
2. What is the World State’s motto?  How does chapter 1 and the discussion of the Hatchery fit this motto?  (Note: the motto is a motif and the entire society is structured around it).
3. “The overalls of the workers were white and their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber…”

Discuss your interpretation of this quote.  Why overalls?  Are overalls an allusion to something?

4. These two chapters introduce three important characters: D.H.C, Henry Foster, and Lenina Crowne.  Who are there?  Henry Foster and Lenina Crowne names have meaning beyond the text.  Their names allude to historical persons.  Find these out. Also note: All the major characters in BRAVE NEW WORLD have facebook pages.  Look these up as the facebook pages does give you information about the character.

5. “Straight from the horses mouth into the notebook…He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth…”  “Consider the horse.”

What is your interpretation of this quote?  What is the comparison?  Note, references to animals and nature reoccur throughout this novel.  Why?  Especially in a novel where human life is controlled (or created and then controlled) since before birth.

6. What is the Bokonovsky’s Process?  How does this process fit the ideal of “Community, Identity, Stability?”

7. Define peritoneum.

8. “Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling.”

What is significant about this quote?

What is the Predestination Room?  What is meant by predestination in this book?  Does this idea, introduced so early in the book, alert you to anything?   How would you feel if your life were predestined?





9. What is the Predestination Room?  What is meant by predestination in this book?  Does this idea, introduced so early in the book, alert you to anything?   How would you feel if your life were predestined?

10. How are Epsilons formed?

11. “…that is the secret of happiness and virtue—like what you’ve got to do.  All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”

12. How are babies conditioned to like and dislike things in the Nursery?

13. Why are some castes (note look up the word) made to dislike books and flowers?

14. Why is parent a dead word?  (Look up the word viviparous).  Why are the terms mother and father considered “smut” or “unpleasant facts”?

15. What is sleep-teaching or hypnopaedia?  What is moral education?

16. What are some differences between Betas, Deltas, Gammas, Epsilons?  (Note: where do the names come from?  Allusion.)

17. “Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind.  And not the child’s mind only.  The adult’s mind too—all his life long.  The mind that judges and desires and decides—made up of these suggestions.  But all these suggestions are our suggestions!”  The Director almost shouted in his triumph.  “Suggestions from the State.

What is significant about the above quote?  How does it relate to the State Motto?

18. “Oh, Ford!”  - the director shouts this at the end of chapter 2.  Who is Ford?  Why is he important (think allusion).