Isolation and solitude are considered together in much of the novel. Closeness to a few, specific others is discouraged in Aldous Huxley’s future society; people are not raised in families, and sexual relationships are likewise short term. Emotional attachments, including those between mothers and children, are considered a burden which had formerly interfered with the smooth, stable functioning of society (chapter 3).

Mother, monogamy, romance. . . My love, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and sicked and miserable. . . . What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain [. . .]—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?

Suspicion of difference runs high, and people who exhibit a preference for solitude are especially suspect. Those who spend a lot of time alone might make independent decisions or even withdraw from society. In this regard, isolation is not used as a tool of social control. Rather, people are encouraged to congregate and to think primarily of the “social body,” in which “everyone works for everyone else.”

Bernard has come to feel different, however, because he is a small person, which is considered a physical defect (chapter 4).

Too little bone and brawn had isolated Bernard from his fellow men, and the sense of this apartness, being, by all the current standards, a mental excess, became in its turn a cause of wider separation.

In contrast, his colleague Helmholtz has a mental excess, which also produces isolation, making him “uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone. . . .” As he becomes increasingly aware of that difference, he develops the opinion that “communal activities were only [. . .] second bests.”

This question can be answered through refering to the character of Bernard, who, compared to his other fellow citizens, is decidedly odd. One of the reasons for this is that he, unlike everybody else, seems to really dislike being with other people and actively seeks out opportunities to be by himself and alone. Note how he responds to Lenina's efforts to force him to socialise:

"In a crowd," he grumbled. "As usual." He remained obstinately gloomy the whole afternoon; wouldn't talk to Lenina's friends... and in spite of his misery absolutely refused to take the half-gramme rasberry sundae which she pressed upon him.

What is most interesting, however, is that when, as Bernard and Lenina return from this date, Bernard hovers over the waves, both characters have very different reactions. To Lenina, she describes the sight of nature as "horrible," and we are told that she is "appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night." To Bernard, looking at the sea makes him feel "as though I were more me... More on my own,not so completely a aprt of something else. Not just a cell in teh social body." To Bernard therefore isolation is something that he actively seeks because it helps him stress his individuality, which is of course in complete contrast to the values of his day and time, as Lenina's reaction to this suggests.