A Brave New World Analysis

Escaping Agonies Human beings have a tendency to avoid problems and suffering in their lives, searching for the “perfect world” in which every individual may constantly feel happy. However, is this “perfection” ascertainable by any individual or mankind as a whole? In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley offers his ideas and interpretations of a utopian society in which each person has the ability to always be happy. In Huxley’s vision, pain and suffering are completely avoidable through the use of a drug called soma. Soma functions as an opiate, allowing its consumers to escape all of life’s hardships almost instantaneously by entering into “another world.” People of the World State heavily depend on soma to live their daily lives each day without

However, individuals of the World State only require comfort for pain and suffering because they are death conditioned at a young age. Interestingly, soma is compared to religion, a comforting human concept. In chapter seventeen Mustapha Mond states, “Christianity without tears - that’s what soma is” (Huxley 238). Soma provides the desired comfort to its consumers, much like the comfort that Christianity provides to its believers. Soma, however, masks the agonies or “tears” in life while Christianity does not completely eliminate the evil in human lives on earth. The Savage, John, suggests, “it is natural to believe in God when you’re alone - quite alone, in the night, thinking about death” (Huxley 235). While God does provide a natural comfort for humans, He does not provide it to the extreme extent that soma does. The World State civilization relies upon soma’s comfort, becoming addicted to the escape from suffering that the drug provides. John confronts Mustapha Mond for “getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it” (Huxley 238). Religion provides comfort from “everything unpleasant,” however, it does not simply eliminate these unpleasant feelings. In the ideas of Christianity, people first must endure these hardships in life before being granted complete relief through eternal life in heaven. Soma does not create the necessity

Mond states this idea himself when he says to the Savage, “Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness” (Huxley 234). Mond believes that without happiness there is instability, which would ultimately end civilization. To ensure that civilization is not terminated, the World State’s civilians are able to be kept under control through conditioning. When discussing the topic of hypnopaedic conditioning, Mustapha Mond offers the thought, “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them” (Huxley 234-235). In addition to the hypnopaedic method, perhaps soma is also used in the society as a way to condition its individuals. Because soma induces feelings of happiness upon its users, the humans believe that they are content. Thus, they do not question why they experience pain and suffering in reality when not consuming the drug. Unlike the World State humans who consume the opiate, the Savage does not. The Savage declares, “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin… I’m claiming the right to be unhappy” (Huxley 240). Because he does not consume soma, the Savage realizes that being unhappy is a necessity of life. Pain is what individuals learn from. Without it, life cannot improve. Soma controls the humans of the World State because they never need to experience and embrace pain, they simply escape