Important Quotations and Literary Devices

There were quite a few important quotes in my opinion in this chapter about how this society truly sees things and how the society works.

Chapter II is about the society and further insight into conditioning and how the society functions as a whole.
An important quote is when the students and Director look into a conditioning class and there are rose blossoms described, "...pale as death, pale with post humous whiteness of marble" (II, pg. 15).
I found this to be important because not only does it paint an emotionless and dark imagery and stark contrast simile on something beautiful, it also provides us with an idea of how the society looks upon such things that we believe are mind-stimulating, inspiring, and beautiful.

The blossoms are being described to the reader in a morbid almost disturbing sense; almost as if it's an oxymoron between beauty and death/pain. I believe this shows that the society itself is emotionless and dark in the ways it expresses itself which reflects an imperfection on this self-proclaimed 'perfect' society.

This kind of twisted imagery occurs again when the babies are being electrocuted for conditioning purposes against nature and they have "distorted faces" and "desperate, almost insane, spasmodic yelps". It is so disturbing the way the society thinks. Such instances in our society would be seen as abuse and called for the most brutal punishment available, and yet such torture is seen as a necessity and even normal in their society.

The second important quote that I found was during the conditioning situation between the babies, shocking, and the blossoms and books. It was said that, "What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder" (II, pg. 17), which is incredibly interesting.
This quote says that since man has become conditioned and accepted it, nature cannot break this new society. However, I believe that nature can fix anything that is not natural. The true nature of society should be emotions, humanity, identity, and coming together as one. However, the society in this book is described as no war, no disease, no dirt... and that is not the least bit natural.

This quote could also be foreshadowing that since this society is so unnatural, that perhaps nature will break it apart and make it natural once more.

Another important quote that I found described the society's views on the hypnopaedia and conditioning was one about words without reason. The Director explains to the tour of students that the conditioning a child undergoes lasts a lifetime, "The mind that judges and decides - made up of these [the moral suggestions about rank] suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!" (II, pg. 23), thus stating that the conditioned mind of a child will always have another person's suggestions in it.
This is very interesting because it shows how ironic their motto of "identity" is when compared to the fact that everything that a person of this society thinks has been conditioned for them to think. Hypocritical, no? They are conditioning children for the sake of making them think what they want them to think, behave as they want them to behave.... but who are 'they'?
'They' are the World Controllers. 'They' are those who want perfection in society and will strive by any means to get what they want, because nothing will stand in their way. Not even nature.

One of the paragraphs that stuck out to me most from this chapter was one that talked about the conditioning process on the mind. Thus stated,
"Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with that they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob" (II, pg. 23), this quote reveals a certain evilness in the conditioning process. The repetition of the conditioning into the children's minds drills holes into their minds until they are one in the minds and are not just conditioned, but are all the children know.
There is wisp of malice in this paragraph however. The conditioning process is described as molding and that hardens into a blob. This just seems so emotionless to me. There is no infliction to the words and they are hard as the rock they describe.
The scarlet blob creates a horrific sense in my head. This could mean that the minds of the children have been violated and hardened by conditioning process and that the scarlet colour creates a scary colour in the head. At least that it how scarlet seems to be in my mind.

All of these quotes and literary devices work together to create a mood or atmosphere of how this society is, works, and acts like. These all help to further create a sense of how the society works and helps to understand the book further on into the plot. In my opinion, understanding the situation and world the characters live in allows a better understanding of the plot and how that affects the characters and the actions they take.

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.

Chapter II - Summary

The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning brought the tour of students to a large bare room with lots of sunlight coming through the windows. There were bowls full of rose blossoms on the floor that were "pale as death, pale with post humous whiteness of marble". There were also books with fun shapes and colours set out among the bowls of flower blossoms.

The Director told the nurses setting up the place to let the children out, and a Bokanovsky Group of 8 month old Deltas were released into the room. The Deltas were instantly drawn to the colourful and inspiring books and flowers and began to crawl towards them, but suddenly an alarm went off and the children had faces distorted with terror. A shock then ran through the floor and the babies started to yelp with desperation.

The Director explained to the students that they were conditioning the children at a young age to not be influenced by flowers and books - as they were not known to be efficient for work. He continued to explain that they would do about 200 repetitions in order to condition the children thorougly. Only Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, the lower-caste people, are conditioned not to love nature due to the fact it did not keep factories busy, even if it did allow them to want to consume transport. They found a new way to keep these ranks wanting to consume transport without loving nature - they would hate the country but love country sports.

The Director goes on to talk about how the world used to be - with mothers, fathers, and family. Now they are obscene words and make people blush and look away. He talks about such a world because he goes on to explain hypnopaedia which is a sleep-teaching tool that uses words while children are sleeping to teach them about certrain things. Scientists found out about this technique when there used to be children brought up by mothers and fathers. It was only useful to a certain extent though. For example, you cannot teach a science to a sleeping child unless they know what it is already. The children undergo Elementary Class Consciousness three times a week for 30 months.

As the Director becomes more excited with the idea of hypnopaedia, he accidentally wakes the children from their sleep-teaching.