In Brave New World, ‘Soma’ is a drug used for societal control, replacing emotions and personal bonds.
“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley presents a dystopian future where desire for pleasure trumps free will, individuality, and intellectual pursuit.
Soma use in the novel, shows the importance of feeling highs and lows to be human.
Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers
Brave New World Soma Theme Analysis
In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, “Brave New World,” the recurrent theme of Soma showcases society’s systemic use of medication as a mechanism for maintaining social order.
This substance, Soma, embodies the power of societal control through its role as a tool for creating contentment, suppressing individuality, and circumventing any form of discontent or rebellion.
Soma as an Instrument of Happiness: The citizens of World State heavily rely on Soma to derive a false sense of happiness and fulfillment.
Henry, for instance, takes three half-gramme tablets of Soma with his coffee (Chapter 5, Page 50). This narcotic effect of the Soma tablets creates what Huxley refers to as “the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday” (Chapter 5, Page 51).
Suppression of Individual Thought: When individuals like Lenina question the state of affairs, Soma’s allure mutes these stirring thoughts.
The psychoactive drug makes it religious for citizens to avoid dwelling on such doubts. For instance, “…why you don’t take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them… ” (Chapter 5, Page 61).
Obliteration of Dissent and Potential Rebellion: The colonial society Huxley establishes in Brave New World utilizes Soma as an instrument of authoritarian power to suppress any form of potential rebellion.
Soma is a barrier to building “a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds” (Chapter 5, Page 52), preventing any individual thought or realization that could foster rebellion.
Induced Mindless Subservience: By constantly being under Soma’s influence, citizens are essentially in mindless servitude.
This servitude is evident when the citizens quaff the “strawberry ice-cream soma” with the chant, “I drink to my annihilation” (Chapter 5, Page 54), demonstrating their unthinking submission to the World State’s manipulation.
Contrast with Natural Happiness: Benito’s character offers a contrasting view of Soma. Despite living in the same society, Benito could traverse life without the need for Soma as “Reality for Benito was always sunny” (Chapter 4, Page 40).
The implication is that inherent human qualities like positivity and good nature can exist independently of artificial drug-induced happiness.
Huxley uses the Soma theme in Brave New World to critique a society that resorts to narcotics to maintain stability and order.
Although Soma ensures a peaceful and conflict-free society, it also eradicates individual thought and genuine human emotions, dehumanizing the populace in pursuing an artificial utopia.
To truly experience the essence of being human, it is essential to navigate through the exhilarating heights of joy and excitement and the profound depths of sorrow and dissatisfaction.
Brave New World Soma Quotes With Page Numbers
“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”
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“There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.”
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“But they used to take morphia and cocaine.”
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“Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178.”
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“Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug.”
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“Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.”
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“All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”
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“Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.”
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“Stability was practically assured.”~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator: Repeated propaganda, Chapter 3, Pages 35, 36
“..there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon…”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Bernard Marx, Chapter 3, Page 37
“Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about Benito, Chapter 4, Page 40
“you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Benito, Chapter 4, Page 40
“Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about Soma, Chapter 5, Page 50
“the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing every one was! ”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about soma, Chapter 5, Page 51
“Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about soma, Chapter 5, Page 52
“The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, “I drink to my annihilation,” twelve times quaffed.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator and the President, Chapter 5, Page 54
“The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, “I drink to my annihilation,” twelve times quaffed.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about soma, Chapter 5, Page 54
“By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator, Chapter 5, Page 54
“I don’t understand anything,” she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. “Nothing. Least of all,” she continued in another tone “why you don’t take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you’d be jolly. So jolly,”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator, Chapter 5, Page 61
“When the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden’s face in an expression of rapt attention.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about Lenina, Chapter 6, Page 68
“Was and will make me ill,
I take a gram and only am.”~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Lenina about soma, Chapter 6, Page 70
“Bernard also laughed; after two grammes of soma the joke seemed, for some reason, good. Laughed and then, almost immediately, dropped off to sleep,…”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about Bernard, Chapter 6, Page 70
“But it’s terrible,” Lenina whispered. “It’s awful. We ought not to have come here.” She felt in her pocket for her soma – only to discover that, by some unprecedented oversight, she had left the bottle down at the rest-house. Bernard’s pockets were also empty.”
Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpais unaided.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Lenina, Chapter 7, Page 74
“Lenina was still sobbing. “Too awful,” she kept repeating, and all Bernard’s consolations were in vain. “Too awful! That blood!” She shuddered. “Oh, I wish I had my soma.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Lenina, Chapter 7, Page 77
“A gramme is better than a damn,” said Lenina mechanically from behind her hands. “I wish I had my soma!”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Lenina, Chapter 7, Page 78
“Her tears began to flow again. “I suppose John told you. What I had to suffer – and not a gramme of soma to be had. Only a drink of mescal every now and then, when Popé used to bring it.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Lenina, Chapter 7, Page 80
“Lenina felt herself entitled, after this day of queerness and horror, to a complete and absolute holiday. As soon as they got back to the rest-house, she swallowed six half-gramme tablets of soma, lay down on her bed, and within ten minutes had embarked for lunar eternity. It would be eighteen hours at the least before she was in time again.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about Lenina, Chapter 9, Page 94
“By his heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex-life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of office hours, ‘even as a little infant,'” (here the Director made the sign of the T), “he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspirator against Civilization itself. For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held in this Centre…”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Directer about soma, Chapter 10, Page 100
“So the best people were quite determined not to see Linda. And Linda, for her part, had no desire to see them. The return to civilization was for her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, as though you’d done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never hold up your head again. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.
“Which will finish her off in a month or two,” the doctor confided to Bernard. “One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would be different. But we can’t.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator and Dr. Shaw, Chapter 11, Page 103
“Surprisingly, as every one thought (for on soma-holiday Linda was most conveniently out of the way), John raised objections.
“But aren’t you shortening her life by giving her so much?”
“In one sense, yes,” Dr. Shaw admitted. “But in another we’re actually lengthening it.” The young man stared, uncomprehending. “Soma may make you lose a few years in time,” the doctor went on. “But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Bernard Marx and Dr. Shaw, Chapter 11, Page 103
“In the end John was forced to give in. Linda got her soma. Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard’s apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand – there she remained; and yet wasn’t there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautifully inevitable windings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction; where the dancing images of the television box were the performers in some indescribably delicious all-singing feely; where the dripping patchouli was more than scent – was the sun, was a million saxophones, was Popé making love, only much more so, incomparably more, and without end.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about John, Linda, and Bernard, Chapter 11, Page 104
“The Savage,” wrote Bernard, “refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because of the woman Linda, his m—, remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his m—‘s senility and the extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her and appears to be much attached to her – an interesting example of the way in which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object).”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Bernard, Chapter 11, Page 106
“What’s in those” (remembering The Merchant of Venice) “those caskets?” the Savage enquired when Bernard had rejoined him.
“The day’s soma ration,” Bernard answered rather indistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover’s chewing-gum. “They get it after their work’s over. Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Savage and Bernard, Chapter 11, Page 110-111
”Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I’m in a coma;
Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny;
Love’s as good as soma.”~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Lenina, Chapter 12, Page 112
“Drying her eyes, Lenina walked across the roof to the lift. On her way down to the twenty-seventh floor she pulled out her soma bottle. One gramme, she decided, would not be enough; hers had been more than a one-gramme affliction. But if she took two grammes, she ran the risk of not waking up in time to-morrow morning. She compromised and, into her cupped left palm, shook out three half-gramme tablets.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator about Lenina, Chapter 11, Page 115
“Helmholtz and the Savage took to one another at once. So cordially indeed that Bernard felt a sharp pang of jealousy. In all these weeks he had never come to so close an intimacy with the Savage as Helmholtz immediately achieved. Watching them, listening to their talk, he found himself sometimes resentfully wishing that he had never brought them together. He was ashamed of his jealousy and alternately made efforts of will and took soma to keep himself from feeling it. But the efforts were not very successful; and between the soma-holidays there were, of necessity, intervals. The odious sentiment kept on returning.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator, Chapter 12, Page 123
“When one has leant forward, nearer and nearer, with parted lips-only to find oneself, quite suddenly, as a clumsy oaf scrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing at all-well, there is a reason, even with half a gramme of soma circulating in one’s blood-stream, a genuine reason for annoyance.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Lenina, Chapter 13, Page 128
“Soma distribution!” shouted a loud voice. “In good order, please. Hurry up there.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, A loud voice. Chapter 15, Page 142
“Bring three men,” he ordered, “and take Mr. Marx into a bedroom. Give him a good soma vaporization and then put him to bed and leave him.”
The fourth secretary went out and returned with three green-uniformed twin footmen. Still shouting and sobbing. Bernard was carried out. ”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Mustapha Mond and the Narrator, Chapter 16, Page 154
“We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God’s property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'” Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “‘A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.'” Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. “One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this” (he waved his hand), “us, the modern world. ‘You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. ‘The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Mustapha Mond and the Narrator, Page 157-59
“In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. When there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended – there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren’t any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving anyone too much. There’s no such thing as a divided allegiance; you’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren’t any temptations to resist. 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. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears – that’s what soma is.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, Pages 161, 162
“Benighted fool!” shouted the man from The Fordian Science Monitor, “why don’t you take soma?”
“Get away!” The Savage shook his fist.
The other retreated a few steps then turned round again. “Evil’s an unreality if you take a couple of grammes.”
“Kohakwa iyathtokyai!” The tone was menacingly derisive.
“Pain’s a delusion.”
“Oh, is it?” said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazel switch, strode forward.
The man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his helicopter.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Savage and the man from the science monitor, Chapter 18, Pages 170-71
“It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered-everything.
“Oh, my God, my God!” He covered his eyes with his hand.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, The Narrator and the Savage, Chapter 18, Page 176
What is the quote about Soma in Brave New World?
“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. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Mustapha Mond, Page 162
What is an example of Soma usage in Brave New World?
In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” Soma is a recreational drug, usage of which is depicted through several main characters in the novel.
For example, the character Lenina is shown to consume Soma responsibly, according to societal norms and standards, whereas Linda’s use of Soma is excessive, leading to her eventual overdose. John, on the other hand, completely rejects the drug.