A Holiday From the Facts

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 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 2 or 3 half-gram tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now...Christianity without tears- that's what soma is. (pg. 213)

In this conversation with John, the Savage, Mustapha Mond reveals just how big of a role soma plays in the World State society because of the way that its citizens are conditioned to depend on it. Soma is there to “calm your anger” and settle all disputes or problems that may arise, and Mond even claims it can “make you patient.” Instead of being forced to choose a personal response to the events and interactions in their lives, the people of the World State only have to choose to pop back a little (or a lot of) soma and wait for its effects to take hold. The narcotic pleasure induced by soma replaces the spectrum of human emotion making the lives and personalities of these people almost standardized. Since everyone is taking the exact same drug in response to replace emotional responses, all individuality is lost.

Mond brags that soma removes the need for “great effort” or “moral training” in becoming “virtuous.” However, without the thousands of individual failures and successes along the way, this “virtue” means absolutely nothing. For the people of the World State, happiness is defined by the lack of discomfort, stress, or anxiety. This soma-induced happiness is merely a controlled preventative measure that protects the status quo and its few benefactors. It allows people like Mond to exercise their power and remain in authority without any real threat of opposition.

On the other hand, given the circumstances surrounding their conditioned, replicated lives, maybe the people deserve this narcotic emotional short-cut because it provides them with their only reprieve from uniform numbness of their society.