Soma Free!

An English assignment based on the book, Brave New World.  From John's point of view...


A Declaration from Soma

“There’s always soma!” I hear this sickening phrase, everywhere I go in this so-to-be-called, perfect world.

What is soma?

Soma is the use of instant gratification to control the World State’s populace. It also shows the powerful influence of science and technology on society. As a kind of “sacrament,” it also represents the use of religion to control society. Soma has taken over our minds.

Soma can calm your anger.

Soma can reconcile you to your enemies.

Soma can make you patient.

Soma can make you long-suffering.

Soma can make you happy.  

Soma this, soma that. Why can’t soma make Ford society go jump in a lake!

Initially, soma is a very one-dimensional exhilaration. It gives rise to only a shallow, non-empathic and uninteresting well-being. Apparently, taking soma doesn't give Bernard Max, the disaffected sleep-learning expert, more than a cheap thrill. Nor does it make him happy with his station in life.  The drug is said to be better than sex - the only sex this brave new world practices. But a regimen of soma doesn't deliver anything elevated or life-enriching. It doesn't catalyze any mystical intuitive perceptions, intellectual breakthroughs or life-defining insights. It doesn't in any way promote personal growth. Instead, soma provides mindless, unauthentic moron happiness where a vacuous escapism makes people comfortable with their lack of freedom. The drug heightens suggestibility, leaving its users vulnerable to government propaganda. Soma is a hypnotic that raises a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.

Oh how I disgust of soma!

What is a way of banishing the world of soma? Well, throwing it away, of course. So when the time of soma-distribution came, I decided to set myself free, by disposing of this trash, they call soma.

The people did not understand what being free meant.

The people did not understand what being a man meant.

They started to attack my views and went all villainy on me. Thou art a villain!

After my incident of throwing packages of soma out the window I met Mustapha Mond.

He was The Controller, he was Ford, and he was the man who thinks soma is the solution to everything. He is a very bright man. He is the only man in this Ford world that doesn’t think I am crazy when I talk about “Romeo and Juliet” or “Othello”. Yet, how can he be so ignorant to let science go, to let culture go, to let religion go, to let knowledge go, and to let God go? All the things that had created our universe is forgotten, or more the less forbidden.

Yet again, I am faced with the controversial idea of happiness. While the majority of

Ford's population would define it with the consumption of soma, I am different. I am intelligent. For good measure, it is absolutely idiotic to even fathom the thought that a drug concludes to happiness.

What fools!

I, however, will not partake in such mediocrity!

I declare myself free from this horrible drug that they call soma!