

This is so effective, according to the leader of the New State, that it takes the place of religion and faith. Given that everyone is provided with a secure and stable place in life, any worry or concern should be simply drowned out with soma. According to Mustapha, a drug induced haze or stupor is always preferable to the reality of life. Christianity without tears-that’s what soma is.”įrom Chapter 17, this quotation for Mustapha as he explains the benefits and value of soma sums up much of the novel.


You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. Some people are bred to be virtual slaves and indoctrinated to accept their status. It also demonstrates the hypocrisy of the World State in which the genetically determined caste system pre-arranges who works and how they are to work. The message demonstrates the programming that people receive under the World State. This is from Chapter 5 where Lenina remembers a hypnopaedic message from her childhood. Things such as family and love are now considered foreign and dangerous ideas which get in the way of the superficial happiness under the World State. It is Mustapha Mond as he explains how life before the World State consisted of things which distracted people from being happy.

Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy.” No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. High spurts the fountain fierce and foamy the wild jet. Literature Guides Brave New World – Quotations and Analysis
