Brave New World Chapter 5, Part 1

It is eight o'clock. Lenina and Henry Foster are leaving the Stoke Poges Club House after a round of Obstacle Golf. They get into a helicopter, the current method of transportation, and they pass by the Slough Crematorium, where Henry explains to Lenina that the balconies around the smokestacks are for collecting phosphorus, which is used as fertilizer. He is happy that people can continue being socially useful even after they are dead. Lenina comments on how strange it is that the nasty lower castes such as Gamma, can produce as much phosphorus as the high-caste Alphas, and Henry reminds her that all men are physico-chemically equal. Lenina has a flashback to her hypnophaedia, or sleep-teaching, how they told her that even Epsilons were useful, and she feels better and remarks that she is glad that she is not an Epsilon. Henry reminds her matter-of-factly that even if she were, her conditioning would have made her no less thankful. They agree that everybody is happy now, a phrase which had been repeated to them one hundred and fifty times a night every night for twelve years.

Topic Tracking: Government 8

They eat dinner and Lenina takes soma. It is a beautiful night and they go to a cabaret to dance to synthetic music -- Calvin Stopes and His Sixteen Sexophonists, who are performing the hit song "There ain't no Bottle in all the world like that dear little bottle of mine." The lyrics are as follows:

"Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
Skies are blue inside of you,
The weather's always fine;
For there ain't no Bottle in all the world
Like that dear little Bottle of mine." Chapter 5, Part 1, pg. 76

They are "bottled," or under the influence of soma, and dance the night away under a sky that is always blue, or more accurately, covered in blue screens, so that they will not have to see dark night sky. The loudspeaker eventually ushers people home politely. They are bottled as they enter Henry's bedroom, but Lenina does remember, due the precautions instilled in her by hypnophaedia from ages twelve to seventeen, a Malthusian drill, to take all the contraceptive precautions before they have sex.

Topic Tracking: Sexuality 8