When John finally tells her he loves her, she offers herself to him. Lenina, meanwhile, is increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of John, but she can't figure out if John likes her or not.

John befriends Helmholtz, reading him Shakespeare while Helmholtz reads him verses that he’s composed himself. As John's friend and guide, Bernard becomes popular-but when John refuses to appear at one of Bernard's parties, the guests turn on Bernard, whom they were indulging only in order to meet the Savage. But he is troubled by the World State, especially because Linda has drugged herself into a happy stupor with soma. John, 'the Savage,' is a hit in London society. Indeed, the public scandal of having fathered a child forces the Director to resign. Bernard, though, plots to publicly humiliate the Director in revenge for his threat of exile. John is overwhelmed by Lenina's beauty and, when Bernard offers to take him and Linda back to London, exultant at the prospect of seeing the “brave new world” for himself. Bernard realizes that Linda is the woman who got separated from the Director, and that John is their son. In the Reservation, after watching some unnerving Indian rituals, Bernard and Lenina meet a young, Shakespeare-quoting “savage” named John, and his mother, Linda. Bernard thinks the Director is bluffing, but just before entering the Reservation, he finds out from Helmholtz that the Director is serious. Embarrassed to have let slip such information, the Director threatens to reassign Bernard to Iceland. The Director signs a permit to allow Bernard to visit the Savage Reservation with Lenina, and as he does so, he reminisces about his own trip to the Reservation 20 years earlier: there was a storm, and his female companion disappeared.

Bernard is miserably aware that he is the only person who didn’t find the Service fulfilling. After taking soma, the 12 attendees engage in solidarity chants, working themselves into an ecstatic frenzy as they call out to “our Ford” and then collapse in an orgy. While Lenina goes on her date with Henry, Bernard attends his biweekly Solidarity Service. Bernard is dissatisfied because he is self-conscious about being small, while Helmholtz is so exceptional at everything he does that he’s begun to feel stifled. Bernard then visits his friend Helmholtz Watson. Later, in the elevator, Lenina accepts Bernard's invitation to accompany him to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico. Acknowledging the need to become more promiscuous, Lenina decides to also date Bernard Marx, even though he is a bit small and strange for an alpha.īernard, meanwhile, is outraged as he listens to Henry Foster and another man have a perfectly “normal” discussion about 'having' Lenina. In the Hatchery changing rooms, Lenina Crowne, a nurse, is criticized by her friend Fanny for only dating one man, Henry Foster. He lectures the students on the World State's creation and its success in creating happiness and stability by eliminating from society all intense emotions, desires, and relationships. The students and the Director get a special treat when Mustapha Mond, one of the 10 World Controllers, joins the tour. The Director calls such conditioning “the secret to all happiness and virtue.” Each caste is conditioned differently, but all castes are conditioned to seek instant gratification, to be sexually promiscuous, to engage in economic consumption, and to use the drug soma to escape from all unpleasant experiences. The Director also shows how each individual is conditioned both before and after 'birth' to conform to the moral rules of the World State and to enjoy his or her predetermined job. The Director shows how the five castes of World State society are created, from Alphas and Betas, who lead the society, down to the physically and intellectually inferior Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons, who do menial labor. The Director of the Central London Hatcheries leads a group of students on a tour of the facilities, where babies are produced and grown in bottles (birth is non-existent in the World State).

Sparknotes brave new world characters