Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us. 

I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is episode 2 of our 4 part series discussing Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  Today we will finish our discussion of part one of this book, chapters 1-5 and begin the transition into the second part.  In other words, we will explore a progressive world of perfect containment and stability before shifting to a primitive one of risk and possibility.  In episode 1, we introduced Huxley, the writer and thinker.  We toured Brave New World’s Hatchery in chapters 1-2- the beginnings.  The Hatchery is where they mass-produce humans- assembly-line style.  We see that the world is genetically and biochemically engineered into fixed classes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon.  For Huxley the political and economic leadership in our world has an interest in freezing the path for upward mobility, making sure all the political and economic power stays exactly where it is.  Whoever is at the top has an interest in using the power of science and technology to produce a controllable standardized man.  This standardized man would be a “perfect” man—or at least an artificially crafted perfect one, perfectly engineered for his predetermined role on this earth- Huxley uses a theological term- predestined.  The overarching metaphor that pervades the novel is inspired by Henry Ford.   In 1903, the Ford Motor Company was formed. The first product was the Model A, introduced in the same year. In order to produce a standardized car that everyone could afford, Ford introduced to the world the concept of assembly-line production.  Their most successful product ever, the Model T, came out in September 1908. In 1909 a new Model T cost $850, but by 1924 the price had gone down to only $260. The average assembly line worker could purchase one with four months' pay in 1914.  Everyone could drive a Model T.  Eventually 15 million model Ts were manufactured and sold.  It is estimated that 40% of American households owned one. 

 In Huxley’s world Ford is divine.  The assembly-line model is the template for life. Community, Identity and Stability are globally accepted ideals, and man is standardized- produced in the hatcheries like the one we’re visiting- the Central London Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre.   We observe the process of fertilizing the eggs, bottling them, putting the lower castes through the Bokanovsky’ process then finally decanting them- or preparing them for independent existence.  

We might call that birthing, but you can’t really be birthed out of a bottle, so I think the word decanting as a replacement for birthing slightly funny. 

 The Bokanovksy process in particular involves grotesque biological engineering.  It’s where lower castes are prenatally treated with x-rays then then are basically doused with alcohol and other poisons to be almost subhuman but capable of performing mind-numbing tasks.  It’s fetal alcohol poisoning scientifically administered for the purpose of subjugation.  But they don’t just poison the embryos, they also deprive the brains of oxygen during the assembly line process for and I quote the director here, there is “nothing like osygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par.”    This is not considered immoral because these epsilons are still perfect.  They are perfectly designed to do what they were designed to do perfectly.  Christy, I used a chiasmus there! 

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