The novel opens in London in AF 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar). The society is illuminated by the activities of the novel's central characters, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx, and others. Lenina, a hatchery worker, is socially accepted and contented, but Bernard, a psychologist in the Directorate of Hatcheries and Conditioning, is not. He is shorter in stature than the average of his Alpha caste—a quality shared by the lower castes, which gives him an inferiorit...
Brave New World's title derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:[5]
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206[6]