Poetry
Poetry is important to the text for many reasons
It is a good example of how the two worlds are different
It is full of everything that no longer exists
Shows Lenina’s change
Uses the poetry of her society.
Pg.193 “Put your arms round me,” she commanded. “Hug me till you drug me, honey.” She too had poetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. “Kiss me”; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, “kiss me till I’m in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly
Conditioning
Thanks to Ivan Pavlov, the founder of classic conditioning, the people in the modern world were controlled using a few different methods.
Hypnopaedia Repeating tapes over and over as they slept. Pg. 27 “and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse.”
Shock therapy
Exposing the babies to undesirable items or behaviors and electrocuting them and ringing loud sirens and bells
Even before being decanted, conditioning is very important to the society. It makes certain cultural acts acceptable.
Engraved the caste-system into their minds
Makes free promiscuity and sex a good thing
Malthusian belts to control population
Social Stability
Stability and predictability are the main goals of the World State. Their motto is “Community, Identity, Stability”. To achieve such order, they use
Conditioning
Soma
To keep everyone happy and submissive
Government
There is no democracy in the World State because they have made a considerable amount of their population too stupid to have a say. There is no dictatorship either. It is a totalitarian government, closely resembling communism. It is Marxism. Marxism has three main points:
Means of labor + subject of labor = means of production
Productive forces + relations of production = mode of production
Also very class conscious
Genetic Engineering
The World State is built on genetic engineering. Without one, the other couldn
’t exist. Genetic Engineering allows the government to treat babies like products and use them for their own purposes. If they need more Epsilons, they deprive more babies of oxygen and hatch them like chickens. They are able to have complete control over the population and the number of people with specific jobs. Without genetic engineering, there would be no “stability” or social order to the World State.
Pg. 6, “One egg, one embryo, one adult - normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized edult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.
Soma
Soma is the manifestation of an entire civilization of uncaring, scared people. The real world is no longer the only reality. They are now capable of completely escaping all the problems that come along with being produced so emotionally immature. They can no longer face the real world.
Pg. 111, “Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpais unaided.”
