Directions: Answer all questions on loose leaf (or typed) in complete sentences. Questions that begin with pronouns (“he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” etc.) will result in a lower grade.

CHAPTER ONE

1. What is the motto of the “new world?”

2. What three steps are involved in creating a human at the Central London Conditioning and Hatchery? Describe them.

3. Describe Bokanovsky’s Process. What is its goal? Why?

4. What is Podsnap’s Technique? What is its goal? Why?

5. What are the five classes of people? Why does the brave new world need a caste system?

6. How are lower class citizens predestined to enjoy their jobs? What are “things” that are done to embryos to ensure affinity to their jobs?

CHAPTER TWO

1. What is Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning? What is its purpose?

2. What is wrong with books and flowers?

3. What does hypnopaedia teach? What does it not teach?

4. What is Elementary Class Consciousness?

5. What caste do the students that are taking the tour belong to?

6. Who is Ford? Why is he picked by the author to begin the future?

CHAPTER THREE

1. What are the women discussing? How has Lenina been behaving abnormally?

2. What are the children doing in the garden?

3. What is Mustapha Mond discussing in his lecture?

4. Describe the conversation between Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator for the Center.

5. Describe Bernard Marx’s soliloquy.

CHAPTER FOUR

1. How do the men feel about Lenina?

2. How does Lenina not fit into the society? What does she feel that is different?

3. Why/How does Lenina embarrass Bernard?

4. How do Bernard and Lenina’s reactions to the rooftop differ?

5. Whom is Lenina meeting?

6. What do you think of Bernard after we are shown a lot of his personality in this chapter?

7. Why does Bernard feel so self-conscious? Who does he especially feel self-conscious around?

8. Bernard is not completely conditioned. How do we know this?

9. Describe Helmholtz Watson. Why are he and Bernard alike?

10. What does Helmholtz do for a living? What does he want to do?

11. At the end of the chapter, what does Helmholtz dislike about Bernard?

CHAPTER FIVE

1. What happens to the members of the Brave New World when they die?

2. What point do Lenina and Henry make about equality in this scene?

3. What do they do on their date?

4. In Part 2, Bernard attends his bi-monthly Solidarity Service, the Brave New World’s version of church. In many ways it is like a religious service, but in a few ways it is definitely not. Describe the solidarity service.

5. What is wrong with Morgana Rothschild? Notice how Bernard obsesses about this!

6. Read the words of the three hymns. What do they all have in common?

7. Bernard tells two lies in this chapter. What are they?

8. What happens at the end of the service?

CHAPTER SIX

1. On Bernard’s date with Lenina, what behaviors of his seem extremely odd to her?

2. After their date, what does Bernard think of Lenina as?

3. What does Bernard tell Lenina he wants to feel?

4. When Bernard goes to get his permit signed to go to the New Mexican savage reservation, how does the director treat him at first?

5. Why and how does this change?

6. How does the director threaten Bernard?

7. How does Bernard react to this?

8. Why is Bernard suddenly panicky as he is waiting to have the reservation permit signed?

CHAPTER SEVEN

1. Where do Bernard and Lenina go at the start of this chapter?

2. What doesn’t Lenina like?

3. Who horrifies her? Why?

4. How is the aging process prevented in the utopia?

5. What offends Lenina that Bernard defends outrageously?

6. What did the drumbeats remind Lenina of?

7. Describe the ceremony Lenina and Bernard watched.

8. What do we learn about the young man as we meet him?

9. What does Bernard learn about John’s parentage?

10. What caste had Linda been in?

11. How does Linda compare life on the reservation to life in the Utopia?

CHAPTER EIGHT

1. In this chapter, Bernard asks John to recollect his life on the reservation. What does John remember?

2. Who did John hate as he was growing up?

3. What book became John’s most important learning tool?

4. How does John’s developing persona seem to be drawn in different directions?

5. What had been the ultimate rejection in John’s life?

6. How does Bernard identify with John?

7. What did John do as his own “Rite of Manhood?

8. Why does John ask Bernard if he is married to Lenina?

9. What reaction to that question do both Bernard and John have?

CHAPTER NINE, TEN AND ELEVEN

1. What is meant by a “Soma Holiday”?

2. Early in chapter nine, when is John twice reduced to tears?

3. What does John do in Lenina’s quarters?

4. Back in London, why has Tomakin summoned Bernard to the fertilizing room?

5. In this scene, how does Bernard upset and humiliate Tomakin?

6. Following the above question, what does Tomakin do?

7. How does London react to John?

8. How does London react to Lenina?

9. How does London react to Bernard and how does he handle this?

10. How are Utopian children prepared for death?

11. What is the reaction of the “Savage” to the “feelies” he and Lenina attend?

12. How is Lenina VERY surprised at the end of Chapter 11?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1. Why does Lenina get so angry with Henry and Fanny?

2. What advice does Fanny give Lenina concerning John?

3. How does John’s love confession prove his naiveté to the ways of the world?

4. Why does John react as he does when Lenina reacts how we would expect her to?

5. Is there anyway John and Lenina could be together? Why or why not?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1. How does the treatment of dying “fit” with the morals of the Brave New World?

2. How are the Delta twins conditioned in regards to death? How is this fitting?

3. How does John react to the twins?

4. Linda dies in this chapter. Describe, with as much detail as possible, the atmosphere of the hospital, the actions of the people John encounters there, and John’s feelings and actions.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN AND SIXTEEN

1. In Chapter 15, who does John liken to “maggots?”

2. In the hospital, what does John attempt to do in order to truly establish a “Brave New World?”

3. When/Why was Bernard standing “in agony of humiliated indecision?”

4. How did the riot squad calm the crowd?

5. At the end of the “riot” what, exactly, happens to John, Bernard, and Helmholtz?

6. What explanation does Mond give for all Utopians not being decanted as Alpha-double-plusses?

7. What was the Cyprus Experiment?

8. Why does Mond think that it would not be a punishment to be banished?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN AND EIGHTEEN

1. Describe the confrontation between Mond and John. What has been sacrificed in the “brave new world?”

2. John contends that you must have extremes of suffering and delight. Explain his view.

3. The Utopians have Violent Passion Surrogate put in their system once a month. What is the purpose of this?

4. Mond points out that John is claiming the right to old age, senility, disease, poverty, hunger, torment, fear, and pain. What is the Savage’s reaction to this?

5. In chapter 18, what is the plan for Helmholtz and Bernard?

6. What does John plead with the Controller? What is Mond’s response?

7. Where does John go? Describe his plan of existence.

8. How is John’s “perfect world” upset?

9. After John’s recollections of Lenina’s beauty, how does he react?

10. What happens when the cameraman begins to make a feely film of John’s self-torture?

11. Describe the way John treats Lenina when she arrives.

12. Discuss John’s participation with the crowd. What happens?

13. How does John repent for his acts?



brave new world study guide questions