The irony is that Lenina feels small in the Reservation, not realizing that that's precisely how she's regarded by the powers-that-be back in so-called civilized society. She's so self-obsessed that she labors under the misapprehension that she's a very important person, not surprising when one considers that just about every man she meets wants to sleep with her.
But Lenina fails to see the bigger picture: how she's been created, manipulated and controlled by the World State as part of some vast project of social engineering. A moment's reflection would've told her that how she now feels at the foot of the mountain in the Reservation is an accurate reflection of her existential condition. But then Lenina's never been big on self-reflection, self-awareness, or anything else that might reveal her true place in the cosmos.
Lenina makes this comment as she and Marx arrive at the Savage Reservation. They walk towards a large mesa or wall of rock that towers up. Lenina is out of place in this world. She says:
“I wish we could have brought the plane,” said Lenina, looking up resentfully at the blank impending rock-face. “I hate walking. And you feel so small when you’re on the ground at the bottom of a hill.”
Her statement can be read as ironic because she is actually more insignificant in her own society than on the reservation. She is a test tube baby, and one of a group of identical twins. She is also conditioned from birth to be just like everyone else in her Beta caste. At her death, she will be cremated and forgotten, as nobody forms strong attachments in the World State. She could not be any less important or "smaller" than she already is.
Ironically, she would have more importance—would be "larger"—as an individual member of the society of the reservation than she does in the World State.
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