Chapter II - Analysis

Chapter II gives the reader a vision of a deeper understanding on this futuristic world and how conditioned it is.

The fact that the babies are conditioned to not like nature is one thing, but their methods are also inhumane and horrid. Shocking the babies so they have "desperate, almost insane, spasmodic yelps" is boderline torture. And yet, this is how conditioning occurs and they will do this for about two hundred repetitions.
Imagine, two hundred repetitions of this - probably not in a day but over months or weeks. Imagine feeling such shock everytime you try to go close to something beautiful such as petals or whimsical such as a picture of a yellow duckling. To us, it would be complete torture. But to babies? Would it be more torturing or less?

However, conditioning babies at such a young age is when conditioning should begin. Babies are constantly learning and if you are constantly conditioning them, then they will learn to be conditioned and learn nothing else but what they are conditioned. In a sense it is genius. It is the perfect way to associate work against nonessentialities such as nature and books in this example and in that world.
The torture part of it? Not so much.
Perhaps Huxley assumed torture is the quickest way to condition such things into the mind of children, or perhaps he just associated torture with conditioning. Personally, I believe that conditioning could be given without the need for pain to be associated with it.
Rewards could have been given just as easily instead of pain but negativity is influenced and recognized more than positivity.

This chapter also reveals some background information about the morality of the society. The words 'family', 'mother', and 'father' are extremely obscene. The students even blush and start snickering at these words as the children today would snicker and blush at words such as 'sex'.

What's interesting is that their society's morals are almost completely backwards to ours.
Everyone belongs to everyone in their society. We believe in one love at a time, and polygamy is seen as obscene and against the law. They do not believe in marriage, while most of us strive for marriage. We look forward to having children while they would be devastated and run directly to an abortion clinic to get rid of such a horrid thing inside their bodies. They never question anything, while we are always questioning everything.
It's almost crazy the way their word's morals are compared to ours. It is like Huxley flipped the world's morals like a pancake on the frying pan.
However, not all the characters in this book believe the morals in that world are correct.

Hypnopaedia was a strong aspect in this chapter. Majority of the childrens' conditioning is during hypnopaedia (or known as sleep-teaching). What was surprising is that the conditioning was about how much better their rank is than anyone else's.
It is obvious that rank is important in this society. Without rank there is no order. But even the Alphas and the Betas are all conditioned even though they are the more highly ranked of the society. It is believed that only the World Controllers are the ones who are not conditioned, or at least not to such an extreme. Which makes sense, who else could create these hypnopaedia teachings?

Basically, this chapter is about the whole conditioning aspect of the future and how the different ranks are conditioned according to their status. They are taught not knowledge, but morality that is almost completely opposite to our own. Mother, father, family... all obscenities are create discomfort among many. Everyone and everything is conditioned. Why? Simply to create order and prevent chaos - or so they believe what was the case when everyone was not conditioned years ago.