Society In Brave New World

The effects of soma are very “drug-like”. Soma is often used by the government to control or condition the members of Brave New World.The use of soma or drugs in Brave New World is different than today and the past’s usage of drugs. During the 1930s, substance abuse and addiction began to rise. In World War II, amphetamines were widely distributed to soldiers to fight fatigue and improve their mood and endurance. Marijuana and a large wave of opiate addiction began to rise greatly. Today, marijuana is the most common illicit drug used.An estimated $193 billion are spent on illicit drugs today. Like today, people during the 1930s used these drugs as “feel good” drugs. Substance abuse and addiction is still a rising problem in today's

In Brave New World Aldous Huxley, creates a dystopian society which is scientifically advance in order to make life orderly, easy, and free of trouble. This society is controlled by a World State who is not question. In this world life is manufactured and everyone is created with a purpose, never having the choice of free will. Huxley use of irony and tone bewilders readers by creating a world with puritanical social norms, which lacks love, privacy and were a false sense of happiness is instituted, making life meaningless and controlled.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, like most satires, addresses several issues within society. Huxley accomplishes this by using satirical tools such as parody, irony, allusion. He does this in order to address issues such as human impulses, drugs, and religion. These issues contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole by pointing out the disadvantages of having too much control within society.

Soma is the answer to all of life's problems and is invented in an attempt to distract society from worry, tension, and pain. The drug is rationed by the government and is normally consumed after a hard day's work. In this utopian society, people choose to "know no pain" (Clareson 238). Instead of suffering, people fill their days with the mindless acts they were predestined to perform. At the end of each day, everyone gathers in crowded distribution rooms and waits eagerly to receive the one thing that truly makes the day worthwhile, which is his or her ration of soma (Huxley 215). This valuable drug goes beyond the literal meaning in which it is being used and becomes the one thing that everyone really lives for. The idea in the novel is that pleasure is the most powerful motivator (Clareson 238). So by giving the masses pleasure, the directors keep the world running smoothly. The directors also eliminate the time between desire and fulfillment, so one cannot help but take the quick fix of soma rather than using logic to figure out his or her problems. It is the mass' motivator and problem solver, and brings the people all the great moods and feelings that they could possible ask for because of its hypnotic power to relax the mind (Meerloo 236). Unfortunately, when the futuristic people take this drug, they eventually

In this world where people can acquire anything they need or want, we have to wonder, “Is the government controlling us?” Both the governments in A Brave New World and in the United States of America offer birth control pills and have abortion clinics that are available for everyone, thus making birth control pills and abortion operations very easy to acquire. Although both governments offer birth control pills and abortion clinics, A Brave New World’s government requires everyone to take the pills and immediately get an abortion when pregnant. This in turn shows us that A Brave New World’s government is controlling the population and the development of children. China is one of the few countries that currently have control of the

In the Brave New World, they used soma to free their minds and to stay happy in that utopia. If too much was taken, it would put you into a coma and it would kill you eventually, even if you didn’t overdose it still kills you. They controllers and the other leaders would have people take soma if they started having feelings

The Brave New World that Huxley created in his book is one of dramatically stratified social classes, Alpha through Epsilon, designed and conditioned from even before birth to fit into their predestined role in the society. Especially for the upper classes, everything is engineered towards comfort and consumption, to the point where people can even escape uncomfortable emotions by taking a drug known as

Moreover, the World State explicitly harvests this “religious emotion” through requiring the citizens to prescribe to their own self-made religion, Fordism. As practitioners of Fordism, the citizens of the World State revere real world Henry Ford as their savior. Huxley utilizes satirical comparisons between Christianity and Fordism to illuminate that today’s government utilizes Christianity in a similar way, to quell the masses. Huxley uses obvious parodies such as switching “Our Lord” for “Our Ford” and cutting the tops off all crosses so they resemble T’s, a reference to Ford’s Model T car, to bring the truth to light without explicitly stating the fact. The followers of Ford also attend regular “Solidarity Services.” These services are comprised of twelve individuals sitting around a table while they sing hymns and ingest soma until the climax of an

Soma in the World State is equivalent to drugs in modern day society. Heroin and Opioid is one of the closest drugs that is related to soma, in with being used as a stress reliever and having the same side effects. In Rajita Sinha manuscript “Chronic Stress, Drug Use, and Vulnerability to Addiction” claimed that “[m]any of the major theories of addiction also identify an important role of stress in addiction processes. These range from psychological models of addiction that view drug use and abuse as a coping strategy to deal with stress, to reduce tension, to self medicate, and to decrease withdrawal-related distress” (Sinha). Sinha claims that people will use drugs in order to relieve stress, in the book Brave New World that's exactly what the people use soma for to relieve their stress in life, like what Benard did after everyone had left him or when Lenina went to the reservation had regretted for leaving her soma back at their room.

In Brave New World, the soma that people take can quickly become addicting. When Lenina and Bernard see Linda and John at the Savage Reservation, Linda tells Lenina, “What I had to suffer - and not a gramme of soma to be had” (Huxley 120). The people in Brave New World are happy when they have soma. Soma does not have the awful side effects that alcohol has. When John, the Savage, starts to throw people’s soma distribution’s out the window “…the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror” (Huxley 213).

Further into the book, it is revealed just how dangerous soma can be. When Linda, John the Savage’s birth mother, is given large amounts of soma, she slowly begins to die. Similarly, drugs in our society have the same effect. “Drugs are essentially poisons. The amount taken determines the effect. A small amount acts as a stimulant. A greater amount acts as a sedative. An even larger amount poisons and can kill” (Drug Free World, 2017, para 6). Just like the drugs we know today in our society, too much soma can become dangerous and can even kill you. In Brave New World, this large intake of soma is used in a practice called “soma holidays”. This is a way to permanently escape the ugliness of the real world by slowly being killed off. Another similarity between the book and today that can be noticed is how people react when these “drugs” are taken away from them. When Linda’s character became pregnant, she was removed from the World State and was sent to live on the Reservation. This was due to the fact that natural birth was considered shameful in the World State. The Reservation is a place where people live and function the way things were before society changed. Because of this change, Linda no longer had access to soma. John recalls all the times Linda would lash out and become violent due to her lack of soma. It was as if she had become addicted, relying on it. In

Soma is an opiate that allows its users to be controlled. It controls through pacification. It offers comfort, but at the expense of

Brave New World has a vastly different society compared with today’s society. Every person in their society is conditioned to behave and act in a certain way. In the beginning of the book the Director explains to the group of boys that everyone is predestined to be someone “We are also predestined and conditioned. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future…” (Chapter 1, Pg. 13). As the Director was saying they are all predestined and conditioned to be a certain people that are put into caste systems such as Alpha or Beta. In our society today no one is placed into categories and no one is conditioned the way the people are in Brave New World. However, we can still be conditioned

It is one of the few things in that society that can bring happiness since they are not allowed to love or have families. Some are not even allowed to read books. Soma is also very addictive to its users. Linda, the mother John and the DHC’s wife, became addicted to soma which led to her death.

In modern USA, citizens are constantly dealing with an unfair and an unstable society. As the novel, Brave New World predicts what the future may hold, modern USA may show many similarities but also many differences. Differences such as the use of drugs, pleasure or self- indulgences, and technological advances. In the novel, society follows a system in which the higher level people get treated with more respect, almost like in modern USA. As society in Brave New World focuses on unity, stability, and identity, modern people focus on love, family, and success.