Liceo Scientifico “E. Majorana” di Latina
Just a Few Notes by Fiorella Falzago
Huxley - Infant Nurseries (conditioning Center)
The extract deals with the Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre ( D. H. C. ) where the director is giving a lecture to a group of advanced students.
The extract can be divided into three parts: description of a strange hospital, conditioning treatment, results of the treatment
The Hatcheries and Conditioning Centre ( D. H. C. ) is named after Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), the Russian physiologist whose studies and experiments on conditioned reflexes (his most famous one is associated with the dog which would salivate at the ring of a bell, even without food) fostered the behaviourist psychology or stimulus-response theory worked out by the American J.B. Watson. Hence the reference to Pavlov in the designation of the rooms.
The conditioning room is large, bare, bright and sunny.
On the floor are set bowls of roses and they are compared to the cheeks of little cherubs.
The description of the flowers takes a whole and very long sentence very rich in adjectives involving colours, race and nationality, number and size (flowers: are ripe-blown, smooth, pink, apoplectic pale, Aryan Chinese Mexican and innumerable and little.
After the detailed description of flowers attention is focused on the books:
quartos (books about 9 1/2 by 12 inches in size)
they share the same "inviting" and "gay" colours of the flowers and they are made attractive by the images of beast fish and bird
With the sun’s appearance they are made even more impressive in fact the roses become " flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within" and the images the books are portrayed as -"a new and profound significance .. of the books"
The presence of this objects is over-emphasized, once more through the use of adjectives in fact, in the sunlight the roses appear transfigured and the pages of the books illuminated
The D.H.C director explains the experiment, in the passage his words are mostly in the form of command to the nurses : Set out the books - Now bring in the children – Put them down on the floor - Now turn them - Offer them the flowers and the books again - Take them away again - he gave the signal - he waved his hand again - he signalled lo the nurse .
There are half a dozen nurses and they are wearing regulation uniforms, made up of trousers, jackets and white caps. Their subordination to the D.H.C. is underlined by explicit statements: the nurses stiffened to attention - In silence the nurses obeyed - They hurried out of the room - The nurses obeyed.
The Head Nurse seems to be entrusted with an important task that is the actual carrying out of the experiment: she pressed down a little lever - pressed a second lever
The children are brought in on a sort of cart or trolley (a dumb-waiter) they are eight months old and belong to a Bokanovsky Group. It is the group that includes a great number of twins from a single egg, who are all alike. They are Delta the caste of people made up of manual workers.
They are all dressed in khaki, first because they are all alike, then because khaki is the colour of the caste they belong to: Delta.
They are first introduced with the attributes and attitudes typical of children in fact they began to crawl with little squeals of excitement, with gurgles and twitterings of pleasure; with their small hands, they touched and grasped, unpetalling the flowers and crumpling the books but there is another object at the other end of the room, which the children have not noticed a switchboard.
From behind the children, suddenly and unexpectedly, two levers are pressed down. The former starts a series of sounds the latter a mild electric shock.
The levers’ effect turned the children into “infant Maniacs” in fact they: started — screamed - their faces were distorted with terror - their little bodies twitched and stiffened their limbs moved jerkily.
When the experiment is stopped, the children have already learnt to hate flowers and books
The babies in lower classes are conditioned to hate books and flowers (nature) because:
· they are detrimental to the economy of the country since "love of nature keeps no factories busy"
· they divert working people's attention
· they do not produce anything materially useful
· because beauty and reading foster feelings and thoughts, two dangerous things in this conformist society
Language is dominated by visual images in the first part (description of roses, books, children’s actions) while in the second is marked the auditive one (explotion, siren, noise, howling, screaming, howls, sobs etc.).
The children’s different reactions is conveyed by onomatopoeias such as: howling, screaming, shrieked, yelps.
The description is concluded by the quotation “books and loud noise ..already in infant mind …were compromisingly linked. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder” it evokes the words of the wedding ceremony. It is ironic because it parodies a part of the ceremony: “Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder”. Other words recall the same topic Wedded/indissolubly (uniti indissolubilmente).
The idea of “marriage” is also emphasized by the word “couples” and the reference is to: books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks.
This link leads to instinctive hatred of books and flowers and reflexes are unalterably conditioned.