In the service, soma and sex represent union with a Greater Being and with each other. Note especially the cries of the participants when they hear the "feet of the Greater Being" as he approaches. Huxley draws on the tradition of the revival meeting here, and he also underscores the similarity between religious ecstasy and sexual excitement — a point completed when the service turns to orgy.
What might once have been the spontaneous expression of sexual feeling — even an act of rebellion — becomes here merely another mandatory state activity. Just as in Westminster Abbey Cabaret, the music at the Solidarity Service sets the pace, initiates feeling, and manipulates actions. Again, Huxley lets the artificial atmosphere descend to control the characters in the rituals of the dystopia.
Note, too, Lenina and Henry's lip service to the worth of every individual. The belief hypnopaedia at work allows upper-caste members of the society to disregard the truth about the deliberately arrested development of the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons that serve them. Epsilons do not mind being Epsilons, Henry and Lenina tell each other, because they know nothing else. Huxley has already offered a brief view of the longing in lower-caste people, with the Epsilon elevator operator in Chapter 4.
Westminster Abbey Gothic church originally a Benedictine abbey where English monarchs are crowned; it is also a burial place for English monarchs, famous statesmen and writers, etc. Here, the site of the Westminster Abbey cabaret, or nightclub. Eventually, he takes a large dose of soma and has sex with her. The next day, Bernard tells Lenina that he did not really want to have sex with her the first night; he would have preferred to act like an adult instead.
When the Director presents the permit, he mentions that he took a trip there with a woman twenty years before. She was lost during a storm and has not been seen since.
When Bernard says that he must have suffered a terrible shock, the Director immediately realizes that he has been revealing too much of his personal life.
He criticizes Bernard for his antisocial behavior and threatens to exile him to Iceland if his impropriety persists. Bernard leaves the office feeling proud of being considered a rebel. A gramme in time saves nine. One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments. Lenina and Bernard travel to the Reservation. When they present themselves to the Warden to get his signature on the permit, he launches into a long series of facts about the place.
Bernard suddenly remembers that he left the scent tap on at his apartment, an oversight that could end up being extremely expensive. Helmholtz has bad news: he tells Bernard that the Director is planning to carry out his threat of exiling him to Iceland.
Instead, the news crushes and frightens him. Lenina persuades him to take soma. Increasingly, he appears less like a political rebel and more like a social misfit who believes that changing society is the only way for him to fit in. His conversations with Helmholtz reveal that he is boastful of his liaison with Lenina, afraid of being caught criticizing the World State, and subservient to Helmholtz when it comes to matters of real rebellion.
Bernard is a paradoxical character, at one moment lusting after Lenina and at the next hoping that he will have the strength to resist her advances. Whereas Bernard is too small and strange for his caste, Helmholtz is, if anything, too perfect.
His success with women, in his career, and in every other aspect of his life has led him to believe that there must be something more to life than high-tech sports, easy sex, and repetitive slogans. Some of the scene-shifting is simply used to flesh out a day in the life of a World State member.
Every one works for every one else. Even Epsilons are useful. As Henry and Lenina contemplate the crematorium, they come close to acknowledging that the caste system may be less than perfect. Lenina feels hurt, empty, and physically ill. Although Bernard is an Alpha-Plus the upper class of the society , he is a misfit. The main reason for Lenina Crowne to wear green in BNW is to identify that she is in the upper caste of their society — she belongs to the upper tier of luxury, freedom, and carelessness.
Why is she glad she is not a Gamma? Lenina hates the color khaki because it belongs to the Delta, one of the lower caste, made up of individuals of low intelligence who work in factories or as drivers of vehicles.
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