He feels that they are talking about Lenina as if she were a piece of meat. Henry is telling the Assistant Predestinator that he should date Lenina because she is fun to be with. Meanwhile Bernard Marx is in the Alpha Changing Room listening to Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator talk about Lenina Crowne. Being alone is aberrant behavior in the Community. Fanny does not like Bernard because he has a reputation for not liking outdoor sports, he spends most of his time alone, and he is unusually small. Lenina tells Fanny that Bernard Marx has asked her to go to a Savage Reservation with him. Fanny convinces her to try, as it is for her own good, because "everyone belongs to everyone else." Fanny suggests that Lenina be a bit more promiscuous. does not like the workers to have long or exclusive relationships. Fanny is surprised that Lenina has been exclusively dating Henry Foster for four months. She sees her friend Fanny Crowne and they discuss their plans for the evening. If they do have problems they take soma to make them feel better.Īfter work Lenina Crowne goes to the Girls' Dressing-Room to get ready for an evening out with Henry Foster. Now old men work, copulate, have pleasure, and are constantly active. All the stigmas of old age have been abolished. The Controller also extolled the virtues of getting rid of old age. This not only replaced Christianity, but also alcohol. To give the people the same feeling of well-being they received through worship of God, they produced in AF 184 a drug that gave a sense of euphoria and happy hallucinations, called soma. They chose the introduction date of Our Ford's first T-model as the first date of the new era. The Controllers also tried to eradicate the past by destroying the historical monuments and censoring all books published before AF 150 and ending Christianity.
After trying to annihilate those who were against them the Controllers decided to use ectogenesis, which is the ability to develop an embryo outside the body, conditioning, and hypnopaedia to change things. The Nine Years' War which began in AF 141 and the great Economic Collapse started the destruction of the pre-modern era. He feels that social stability cannot be achieved without individual stability and that it is this stability that has built the World State. The Controller stresses social stability is what makes a civilization. This is because the populace was not conditioned to obey, so they were condemned to loneliness, disease, poverty, and hopelessness. All of these terms are foreign to the students because in the World State "everyone belongs to everyone else." He tells the students that with mothers, monogamy, and romance the pre-modern world population was an insane and miserable place. The Controller speaks to the students of husbands, wives, monogamy, and romance. This is where the tradition of parents and no parents meet. The Controller explains that in the islands off New Guinea, Trobriands felt that conception was from ancestral ghosts.
Mustapha Mond, the Controller, tells the students Our Freud felt that family life was full of pitfalls such as miserable fathers, mothers who conjure feelings ranging from sadism to chastity, and siblings and other relatives who promote feelings of madness and suicide. The Controller tells the students the Our Ford liked to be called Our Freud when he explained psychology. The Controller also emphasizes the emotional toll of living as a family took on each family member such as the children feeling suffocated by the attentions of their mother.
The students are repulsed at the idea of living in such conditions. He talks to the students about the small, stifling, and overpopulated homes in which people lived. That being said, he has decided to speak to them about human history. First he quotes Our Ford by saying "History is bunk." The Controller feels that all events which occurred before the World State was established should be wiped away. The Controller takes over the discussion on history. Instead of the Director answering them, the Resident Controller for Western Europe, Mustapha Mond, answers, he tells them that it was terrible. The students enquire what the result of this suppressed behavior was. In the time before Ford, sex was not considered normal until a person was at least 20 years old. He informs them that erotic play was, in the time before Ford, considered abnormal, the students laugh at this notion.
The Director starts to tell the students about their history. Chapter three begins with the students watching children engaging in games and erotic play.