Socratic Seminar Prep Questions 1
Brave New World Ch. 1-3
College Prep English
Babienko
Be prepared to address each of the questions below – this means you have put some real thought
into the questions and typed up possible answers, and included a few relevant quotes for each
question, and are ready to discuss your answers to the questions in seminar. Each answer should
be at least 100 words of your own writing, NOT including quotes. YOU MUST TYPE YOUR
PREP FOR CREDIT.
1. The novel opens with a visit to the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre.
How does the work of the Hatchery help make the motto “Community, Identity,
Stability” a reality? Include at least two examples from the text (quotes with page
numbers) to support your answer.
2. Discuss the purpose of the games that are played and the sayings that are used in this
society. Refer in particular to the Director's statement at the beginning of Chapter 3.
Examine and analyze statements like “Ending is better than mending. The more stitches,
the less riches…” Also consider Fanny's statement later in the same chapter when she
says “...one's got to play the game. After all, everyone belongs to everyone else” (43). To
what extent in this novel has society reduced life to a series of clichés and sex to a game?
Why has it done so? Be sure to include at least three examples (quotations with page
numbers) in your answer.
3. In his conversation with the students, Mustafa Mond uses an analogy to illustrate the
“appalling dangers of family life” (38): ‘”Think of water pressure in a pipe…I pierce it
once […] What a jet!’[…] He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little
fountains” (40).
Explain how the Controller’s analogy relates to the World State’s view of sex and soma.
Be sure to include at least three examples from the text (quotations with page numbers) to
support your answer.
4. What is accomplished through Huxley’s technique of shifting rapidly between three
different scenes, or conversations, in Chapter 3? Why does he employ this technique?
How does it contribute to the main idea(s) of the chapter? Be sure to include at least two
examples (quotations with page numbers) to support your answer.