Chapter 2: Summary and Analysis

In this chapter, the students are taken to the nursery, where infants are categorized as alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, or epsilons. These are hierarchical categorizations, with alphas at the top of the hierarchy and the epsilons at the bottom. The chapter also focuses on the practice of hypnopaedia, or sleep-teaching. The overlords believe that “words without reason,” or “wordless conditioning” is the best way to teach, train, manipulate, and enslave humans.

Infants are administered shock therapy and also have to endure long hours of hypnopaedia to have the rulers’ ideas instilled in them. In effect, the infants’ minds aren’t independent entities, but a mere extension of the rulers’ ideas—a thoughtless and universal whole that knows nothing beyond what it is told to do.