:) BRAVE NEW WORLD 2

            “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 tow or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is.”(213)

            Mustapha Mond is explaining to John the wonders of soma and its benefits to society. He says that this drug is a large part of what makes everyone happy now and that life is simply better without the nuisances of negative feelings such as anger, jealousy, and impatience. However, John refuses to accept this and sees soma as nothing more than a leash forced onto humanity by the governors of this society.

Soma has become the Brave New World society’s religion. It fulfills all the roles of religion in society. It provides something to rely on in any time of need. It is the answer to all of life’s mysteries and problems. It is also a major tool of control used against the society. This passage lays out the connection between religion and control as well as shows the way that the Brave New World society has utilized technology to engineer a religion that is just as, if not more, effectively available and “worship-able” as Christianity. Truly, it is “Christianity without tears” (and almost everything else).

            This passage blatantly illustrates the way the essences of humanity have been erased in this mass-produced society. Throughout the novel, it had already been established that individuality was the first to go when this societal reform started. With the introduction of soma, honest feelings, virtue, and morality were also erased. While Mustapha claims that this is the solution to society’s problems, John rejects it and believes that the sincere contrast of pain and pleasure, happiness and despair, is more desirable than this life-duller. There is no longer any morality but soma, no other consolation but soma. In a way, soma is the physical manifestation of the stability that this society seeks and achieves. It is a stability that means neither true happiness nor sadness and is too superficial to understand the potential and beauty of the soul.