Brave New World

Chapter 4 opens with Lenina entering a packed elevator heading toward the roof. While there, being greeted by her many admirers, she spies Bernard Marx and asks him about the trip to the Savage Reservation they had tentative plans for. Marx is noticeably uncomfortable during this public conversation and asks if they shouldn’t speak about it in private. Lenina laughs this off and says, “how funny you are!” (58). She leaves him on the roof, heading for her date with Henry Foster, another thing that makes Marx uncomfortable, as he does not like Foster, or the freedom with which Lenina spends time with other men. After Lenina leaves, Bernard is accosted by another fellow coworker and sometimes companion of Lenina’s, Benito Hoover, who tells him he looks “glum” and should take some soma. Part 1 of Chapter 4 ends with Lenina in Foster’s aircraft, seeing a group of Gammas and repeating the hypnopaedic mantra, “I’m glad I’m not a Gamma” (63).

Part 2 of the chapter follows Bernard Marx as he reels from his interaction with Hoover. Marx gets his own aircraft, ordering the “Delta-Minus attendants” about in an “arrogant and even offensive