It was hard to say. Full blood heat sterilizes. One egg, one embryo, one adult—normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. We check the normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding.
He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was entering a large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told them.
Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos— a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature.
Identical twins—but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time. Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.
For the first time in history. Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology. Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From the same ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible—that was the best sadly a second best that they could do.
And even that was difficult. But our business is to stabilize the population at this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarter of a century—what would be the use of that?
Obviously, no use at all. They could make sure of at least a hundred and fifty mature eggs within two years. Fertilize and bokanovskify—in other words, multiply by seventy-two—and you get an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.
Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be passing at the moment. The ruddy young man approached. Foster replied without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting figures.
Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand five hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand mark.
But then they have unfair advantages. You should see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. Foster on the shoulder. In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity. Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Brave New World warns of the dangers of giving the state control over new and powerful technologies.
One illustration of this theme is the rigid control of reproduction through technological and medical intervention, including the surgical removal of ovaries, the Bokanovsky Process, and hypnopaedic conditioning. Soma is a third example of the kind of medical, biological, and psychological technologies that Brave New World criticizes most sharply. It is important to recognize the distinction between science and technology. Whereas the State talks about progress and science, what it really means is the bettering of technology, not increased scientific exploration and experimentation.
It is important to understand that Brave New World is not simply a warning about what could happen to society if things go wrong, it is also a satire of the society in which Huxley existed, and which still exists today. Brave New World is full of characters who do everything they can to avoid facing the truth about their own situations. The almost universal use of the drug soma is probably the most pervasive example of such willful self-delusion.
Soma clouds the realities of the present and replaces them with happy hallucinations, and is thus a tool for promoting social stability. What are these two abstract entities that Mond juxtaposes?
It is less clear what Mond means by truth, or specifically what truths he sees the World State society as covering up. In the highly-controlled social world, the ability for the government to control the number of humans is important, as is the ability to control the function of those humans. Bokanovsky's Process, combined with Podsnap's Technique for speeding up the maturation of unfertilized eggs from an ovary, is used to produce massive numbers of a genetic group: "Fertilize and bokanovskify Centers in tropical climates can get better numbers: Singapore created over 16,, and Mombasa has touched 17, Bokanovsky groups usually work together doing a single task, and by manipulating the in vitro chemicals, various subclasses can be created from a Bokanovsky Group.
Statistik Online seit Tagen Letzte Aktualisierung: The Predestinators, for example, are a farcical secular manifestation of the Calvinist religious belief that God predestines individuals for heaven or hell before birth. In fact it becomes one of the pillars of stability for the totalitarian World State. Moreover, conditioning makes them virtually incapable of performing any other function than that to which they are assigned. The satirical tone of the text makes it clear that, though social stability may sound like an admirable goal, it can be used for the wrong reasons toward the wrong ends.
One theme emphasized repeatedly in this first chapter is the similarity between the production of humans in the Hatchery and the production of consumer goods on an assembly line. Everything about human reproduction is technologically managed to maximize efficiency and profit. Following the rule of supply and demand, the Predestinators project how many members of each caste will be needed, and the Hatchery produces human beings according to those figures.
One of the keys of mass production is that every part is identical and interchangeable; a steering wheel from one Model T fits neatly onto the steering column of any other Ford.
Similarly, in the Hatchery, human beings are standardized by the production of thousands of brothers and sisters in multiple groups of identical twins using the Bokanovsky and Podsnap Processes. The lower castes are more subject to these forces of anonymity and mechanization.
Members of the higher castes are decanted one by one, without any artificial intervention. Thus the higher castes retain at least some level of the individuality and creativity that is denied completely to the lower castes. Ace your assignments with our guide to Brave New World!
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