After being born, children are conditioned to behave in accordance to their caste. That is, keep everyone drugged and complacent. But what exactly are soma? What do the different colors of soma mean in Brave New World? And what are the soma in real life?
Soma is one of the few things that the Brave New World series absolutely carries over from the books. In the book as in the show, it is a drug that leaves people feeling blissed out and happy.
When John the Savage Alden Ehrenreich joins the society of New London, he is struck by how it is used to control the masses. Lenina Crowne Jessica Brown Findlay finds herself spiraling after learning that it is possible to not take soma and to feel real, poignant emotions. Soma is a regulated substance given out to all citizens in a pill form. In a small dosage soma simply makes people feel good. And in larger dosages it can make people hallucinate and experience a feeling of timelessness.
The use of soma is extremely common throughout Brave New World — with people even taking soma "holidays" to distract themselves. Early on in the book he meets with John, a newcomer to their way of life, during which he explains the importance of soma in their society. As he tells it, citizens are "so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave.
It's the glue that holds his utopia together. It's a device he uses to eliminate any possible discomfort that the world he created does not otherwise control. I don't see it as a form of mind control but I see mind control as a result of the total conditioning that people in this world experience.
Andy It's happiness in a pill, people can choose to have it like most people in the utopia and they can choose not to ex: Bernard on some occasions. I suppose you could say that it's a type of mind control thing since people are conditioned since birth to enjoy it, but it isn't quite. I think the significance of soma is to introduce something that's unsettling yet understandable, like the utopia as a whole. Think about it, a pill that does some weird thing to you that could make every day a good one.
Lost your job? Break up with someone? Death of a loved one? Of course you can't really apply these examples to the society in the book because of the way it works. I suppose that soma could be interpreted as a type of mind control, but keep in mind that the people since birth are conditioned to be perfectly happy with their lives and are basically clones of one another, and soma provides a way to plug up some of the holes in the system.
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