The Director of the Central London Hatchery leads students through the Bokanovsky Process, explaining how human beings are manufactured by caste.

The Director demonstrates Neo-Pavlovian conditioning — infants trained to hate flowers and books via electric shocks — and explains hypnopaedia, the sleep-teaching that instills World State values.

Erotic play among children is observed; the Controller Mustapha Mond delivers a compressed history of the World State; Bernard Marx is introduced as a misfit Alpha; Lenina is reprimanded for quasi-monogamy.

Bernard's social awkwardness is on display: uncomfortable with Lenina in public, overlooked by Alphas, treated as an equal by Deltas who don't recognize his rank. Helmholtz Watson confides his own secret dissatisfaction.

Henry Foster and Lenina return from Obstacle Golf via helicopter, observing the Crematorium and phosphorous-recovery factory. Bernard attends a Solidarity Service — a Ford-worship ceremony — and finds it hollow.

Bernard and Lenina's relationship strains under his insistence on 'real' experience. Bernard visits the Director, who reveals a personal connection to the Savage Reservation. They fly to New Mexico.

Bernard and Lenina witness a religious ritual on the Reservation, including self-flagellation. They meet John — the son of a World State woman — and Linda, his mother, who is degraded and fat from mescal and reservation life.

John tells Bernard his life story — the Reservation, Linda's promiscuity, his exclusion from male rituals, his discovery of Shakespeare, his failed attempt at initiation. Bernard decides to bring John and Linda back to London.

Lenina sedates herself with soma for eighteen hours. John breaks into the guest house to find her sleeping and is overcome by desire mixed with reverence. Bernard secures permission from the World Controllers to bring John and Linda to London.

Bernard returns to London in triumph with John and Linda. The Director attempts to publicly shame Bernard; Bernard produces John, who kneels before his father and calls him 'my father.' The Director resigns in humiliation.

John becomes a sensation; Bernard is socially successful for the first time and grows vain. John refuses to see the crowds. Bernard's report to the Controller reveals his own unorthodox attitudes. John visits Eton; Lenina and John's relationship strains.

Bernard's social standing collapses when John refuses a party. Helmholtz and John meet and find unexpected kinship through Shakespeare. Bernard becomes sulky and resentful.

Lenina attempts to seduce John. He is overcome by conflicting desire and reverence, calls her a whore in Shakespearean terms, and she retreats in bewilderment. The chapter ends with a phone call: Linda is dying.

John watches Linda die in the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying, surrounded by conditioning broadcasts and Delta children on death-appreciation outings. He weeps and is misunderstood by everyone.

John, outside the Hospital, finds Deltas receiving their soma ration. He attempts to liberate them by throwing the soma out a window. A riot erupts. Bernard and Helmholtz arrive; Bernard hesitates while Helmholtz helps John. All three are arrested.

Mustapha Mond receives Bernard, Helmholtz, and John. He explains the World State's conscious trade-offs: stability required the sacrifice of God, art, science, and authentic emotion. Mond reveals he himself was once a physicist.

John and Mond continue alone. John claims the right to God, poetry, danger, freedom, goodness, and sin — all the things the World State has abolished. Mond agrees they are real goods and explains why they were sacrificed anyway.

John retreats to a lighthouse on the Surrey downs to live as an ascetic. Journalists find him. He is made into a feely. Lenina appears in the crowd. John whips her in a frenzy; the crowd joins in. He hangs himself. His feet slowly rotate.