Brave new world: Characters

Getting Deeper Into the Book

Brave New World opens in the year 2495 at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center, a research facility and factory that mass produces and then socially conditions test tube babies. Such a Factory is a fatting place to begin the story of mass produced characters in a techno futuristic dystopia, a world society gone mad for pleasure, order and conformity. The date is A.F 632, A.F. -After Ford- being a notation based on the birth year of Henry Ford, he famous automobile manufacture and assembly line innovator who is worshiped as a God in Huxley's fictional society.

Five genetic castes or classes inhabit this futurist dystopia. In descending order they are named for the first five letters of the Greek alphabet: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. While upper castes are bred for intellectual and managerial occupations, the lower castes, bred with less intelligence, perform manual labor. All individuals are conditioned by electric shock and hypnopaedia (sleep conditioning) to reject or desire what the State dictates.