Answer:
1. Bernards preferred the quietness of the sea and the clouds. It make it gave him some kind of peace. Lenina on the other hand found it boring. No matter how much she tried to enliven the evening, such as turning on the radio to listen to romantic music, Benard was insistent on shutting himself inside himself and wanted her to appreciate him like that.
Lenina persisted until they went back that night and salvaged the situation with Benard riding on a quartet of Somas.
2. At the Central London Hatchery And Conditioning Centre, human embryos were experimented upon and predestined based on various kinds of "production" techniques to be able to behave in a certain way.
Some were preconditioned for work, hence traded that off for an almost zero social life. Others were preconditioned to manage others.
They fell into the following categories:
- Alpha
- Gammas
- Deltas, and
- Epsilons
Benard considered himself inadequate. He was supposed to be an Alpha but fell slightly short of the required standards. Hence the quotation referred to in the question. Alphas were programmed to be infantile and he disliked that about himself. He wanted to feel as an adult would.
3. Lenina was sorely displeased at what she saw. Their savage way of life, the beatings and impact of age on the skins of the savages, their diseases. She wanted to go back.
4. Benerard bragged about how it was that he had lain with different savages. Helmholtz reaction was critical of such behavior. Initially, it was saddening to him but later it made him feel important.
Helmholtz reaction showed that he is a true friend because a true friend would never approve of negative behavior.
5. In the reservation, there were old people whose skin were already sagging off their skins, half-naked people dressed in very native fashion, ceremonies that entailed people being beaten mercilessly, and prevalence of orgies. Sick people went around unattended, and their bodies exposed and oozing from all manner of stench.
This was a sharp contrast to where Benard was coming from. They were engineered to be young forever, their emotions were preprogrammed, they had a tap for scent which depicted luxury.
Huxley juxtaposed these two realities in order to stimulate in the readers mind critical thoughts that challenged all the already laid down mentality that the Hatchery was totally evil.
The intelligent reader begins to see how it is that even in the obscurity of the experiments, there were advantages too.
6. He gets news from Helmholtz that he will be sent to Iceland. Alphas were developed and programmed to be sustained by heat. Going to Ice land meant he would have to endure the cold or die trying. The news comes to him as a shock and he feels fearful of the unknown.
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