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Henry Foster symbolizes the World State's dehumanization of humanity. In Chapter 1, he meets a group of students touring his workplace and enthusiastically rattles off statistics about the Bokanovsky Process—the World State's method of artificially producing human life in a lab. When discussing experiments on human beings as well as artificial production, conditioning, and predestination, he shows no regret or apprehension. His obsession with figures and statistics grants him a certain level of distance from those they’re based on, and he speaks about human life in general in a similarly impersonal and detached manner. His character illustrates that under the World State, human life has been reduced to a science experiment. Henry is the perfect citizen, one who gladly celebrates the World State’s laws and customs. Fanny sums him up well in Chapter 3 when she describes him as “the perfect gentleman—always correct,” who stands for the "strictest conventionality.” Like Fanny, Henry rejects monogamy, as illustrated by the fact that he casually offers up Lenina to the Assistant Predestinator.
Henry experiences a moment of humanity in Chapter 5 when he and Lenina fly over a crematorium. He briefly expresses remorse over the idea of life lost anonymously but almost immediately recovers and remarks that “everybody's happy now,” parroting the beliefs of the World State. Henry is a static character, meaning he remains unchanged by the end of the book. In Chapter 17, John argues that citizens of the World State need "something with tears for a change" because “nothing costs enough [there].” Previously, when he had made the same argument to Henry, Henry had objected and reported to John that the new Conditioning Center cost twelve and a half million dollars, missing the point completely. Henry, then, is a testament to the World State’s conditioning; he truly believes that anything that holds value is quantitative and measurable.
