Brave New World - Twelve

"Buzz, buzz! the hive was humming, busily, joyfully" (pg 147).

This metaphor clearly compares the Hatchery to a bee hive.  It makes sense, because in a bee hive, everyone does the work for a soul purpose - to grow the colony.  In this twisted reality, the "queen bee" seems to be the director.  He (okay, king bee?) seems to oversee all of reproduction that takes place in the Hatchery.  Not only this, but all the workers (drone bees) appear to not even put up a fight for what is supposed to happen.  Ultimately, everything revolves around Tomakin.  For example, he had the final say in the possibility of excommunicating Bernard Marx.  This totalitarian government (if you can call it that) seems to only work because of the intensive brain washing which every "baby" undertakes, but is evidently not 100 percent effective.  Even further supporting the bee hive symbolism is the caste structure of the Hatchery.  The Hatchery is clearly made up of a majority of the drone workers who have no real purpose but to do everything necessary to keep the place running.  Next up, there is a small sector composed of people who work closely with the queen king bee, but do not have all the manual labor of the drones.  Lastly, there is the king bee who controls the rate of growth within the hive.  I am thinking this is going to bee (It's a pun!) a nice second half to the novel!

In case you are not an expert on bees.