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Unit 18: Aldous Huxley—Brave New World: Detailed Study of Text-I

Stopes and His Sixteen Sexophonists” until the show ends. They return to Foster’s apartment Notes
and prepare to sleep together. Even though the soma has put Lenina in a hypnotic state, she
remembers to take her contraceptive drugs because years of hypnopaedic drills have “made
the taking of these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as blinking.”
Meanwhile, Bernard attends a Solidarity meeting, a community gathering where the people
worship Ford for his ideas and try to merge themselves into a unified group. Bernard is almost
late and feels embarrassed when a woman asks him which sport he played that afternoon,
since Bernard has to admit that he does not usually play any games.
The twelve people in his group take a seating arrangement around a circular table that alternates
sexes. The service resembles the Eucharist in Christianity, but they consume soma rather than
bread and wine. The goal is to unify the twelve people present into one person. The people
sing until they feel Ford’s presence, and then they dance to the hymn “Orgy-porgy.” Bernard
fixates on Morgana, a woman whose unibrow distracts him so much that he cannot feel the
same ecstasy as the other people and must pretend to be as caught up in the ceremony as the
others. The service ends, and Bernard emerges feeling more self-conscious than ever before.

Analysis
Foster and Lenina represent the majority of society, who have a limited range of actions and
do not do anything extraordinary. Their conversation consists of repeating phrases learned
during hypnopaedia and therefore contains no new intellectual ideas. When they go dancing
at the Cabaret, they join 400 other people, indicating that they adhere to state doctrine.
Their conversation about the crematorium also signifies the social control that the state has
created. They do not fear death or analyze any philosophical conundrums about life and
death. They cannot even fully comprehend what it would mean to be a member of a different
caste. Lenina and Henry both agree that it would be worse to be an Epsilon or a Gamma than
it would be to die. Death, as Henry puts it, is simply another way to benefit society.
The twisting of religion also occurs in this chapter. Henry and Lenina attend a dance club at
the “Westminster Abbey Cabaret.” Westminster Abbey is one of the most famous Churches in
Western Religion and an important symbol in the Protestant religious tradition. Huxley again
shows how the state can appropriate religious symbols for social control. Westminster Abbey,
a symbol of strict religious authority, is now a club that encourages dancing, sex, and other
kinds of activity that might today be immoral. The name of the band alludes to John Calvin,
a prominent figure in Protestantism and a major theologian of predestination, the doctrine
that God has already determined the fates of everyone in the universe. These symbols show
how rewriting history can suppress original thought.
The religious service attended by Bernard also uses Christian icons and concepts. The circle
consists of twelve people, which parallels the twelve disciples of Jesus. The drinking and
consuming of soma reflects the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, where Christians consume the
metaphorical blood and body of Christ. Each service tries to bring wholeness to the individual
participating in them. However, the similarity ends here, and the sexual dancing which follows
rejects Christianity in favor of a primal sexual dance. The worship of Ford reinforces this
society’s sexual norms.
Bernard’s inability to join the group as it merges spiritually and sexually further emphasizes
his distinctness. Because they already lack any individuality, the other group members easily
unite, but spiritual merger is impossible for Bernard. He has achieved a sense of self-awareness
that is merely nascent in the other characters of the novel. Lenina, for instance, has a brief
flashback in which she remembers the hypnopaedic therapy of her childhood. She instinctively
senses that the process is unnatural, but she disregards those notions for the implanted feelings
and phrases of her conditioning.

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