At first when reading Brave New World, I got the idea that most people were happy except for the few rare exceptions, such as Bernard. After reading 12 chapters, it seems that as a reader you are discovering more and more people who are unhappy. These people do not tell others that they are unhappy, however. One example is Lenina. Lenina seems to like John a lot, but no matter what she does Lenina cannot express these emotions with him. In this society, you are not supposed to like only one person. Lenina has not expressed these feelings to anyone else yet which has allowed her to maintain a high social level. She has been with several higher up males, but she has still only wanted John.
When people in this society start to feel emotions other than happiness, they turn to soma. They go on soma holidays where they only feel happiness, but are in a coma so they cannot interact with real people. The length of these soma holidays differ; sometimes they are only for an hour or two, and other times people go on them for days. Linda is currently expected to be in her soma holiday for 30 days. In our society, if someone were to take a drug and it knocked them out for hours on end, the person would have a major problem and would need to get help. In Brave New World, it is normal and if you were not to go on soma holidays, then you would have a problem and you would need to get help in order to fit back into society. It is interesting how Huxley turned this social norm around. The 1930's was probably a time when drugs were becoming an issue and Huxley wanted to take this issue and show what life might be like if drugs were to take over a part of society. It seems that Huxley has taken a lot of themes of what was happening in the 1930's and took them to the extreme, such as with the conveyor belt.
after reading the first paragraph of christian's post it reminded me of the Handmaids tale in which Offred loved only her husband but her job consisted of being with other men (in a higher power) and to have their children.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we don't use soma to pacify ourselves, we do pursue other means of keeping our unhappiness in check. We rely on technology to distract us, sometimes for hours on end, and this is not unlike a soma holiday. When we're bored or uncomfortable, we reach for our phones as a means to refocus our attention. While Huxley wrote this novel in the 1930s, the concept of distraction is ever-present, and I believe he is warning us against too much of it.
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