In a room where older children are napping, a whispering voice is heard repeating a lesson in “Elementary Class Consciousness.” He then tells the boys about the “hypnopaedic” (sleep-teaching) methods used to teach children the morals of the World State. The Director explains that this conditioning helps to make Deltas docile and eager consumers. The Director then leads the boys to the Nursery, where they observe a group of Delta infants being reprogrammed to dislike books and flowers. Lenina Crowne, an employee at the factory, describes to the boys how she vaccinates embryos destined for tropical climates. The Epsilons, stunted and stupefied by oxygen deprivation and chemical treatments, are destined to perform menial labor. Each of the succeeding castes is conditioned to be slightly less physically and intellectually impressive. The Alpha embryos are destined to become the leaders and thinkers of the World State.

During the gestation period the embryos travel in bottles along a conveyor belt through a factorylike building, and are conditioned to belong to one of five castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. The boys learn about the Bokanovsky and Podsnap Processes that allow the Hatchery to produce thousands of nearly identical human embryos.

The novel opens in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the Director of the Hatchery and one of his assistants, Henry Foster, are giving a tour to a group of boys.

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