brave new world quotes about taking soma

When Phil Potter (Burt Reynolds) has a panic attack in a furniture store, his brother asks the gathered crowd if anyone has a Valium, and the crowd immediately replies with virtually everyone pulling out their own bottle of pills to offer the panicked Phil.Īs these simple media examples demonstrate, the widespread use of Valium rapidly extended the range and scope of psychiatric medicine as pills were increasingly prescribed to treat a wide range of common everyday anxieties, thereby transforming psychotropic pills into a commonplace staple of modern American life. This apparent ease with which Americans have come to accept Valium-along with its fellow benzodiazepines, from Librium (chlordiazepoxide) and Klonopin (clonazepam) to Ativan (lorazepam) and Xanax (alprazolam)-is comically illustrated in Alan J. Then when he responds that he has already taken one, she nonchalantly tells him to just take a second. When Mike complains to Carol that he is nervous about their impending ceremony, she immediately replies that he should just take a tranquilizer, presumably a Valium (diazepam). Faith in the effects of the drug have replaced everything.While it would have been completely unthinkable for Mike and Carol Brady to light up a joint or get rip-roaring drunk on screen, the very first episode of the first season of The Brady Bunch (1969) unproblematically opens with the couple, the very paragons of middle-American morality, casually popping pills on their wedding night: taking a couple tranquilizers to calm their prenuptial jitters. We can have faith in God without the worrisome struggles of faith. This is so effective, according to the leader of the New State, that it takes the place of religion and faith. Given that everyone is provided with a secure and stable place in life, any worry or concern should be simply drowned out with soma. According to Mustapha, a drug induced haze or stupor is always preferable to the reality of life.

Christianity without tears-that’s what soma is.”įrom Chapter 17, this quotation for Mustapha as he explains the benefits and value of soma sums up much of the novel. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. “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. Some people are bred to be virtual slaves and indoctrinated to accept their status. It also demonstrates the hypocrisy of the World State in which the genetically determined caste system pre-arranges who works and how they are to work. The message demonstrates the programming that people receive under the World State. This is from Chapter 5 where Lenina remembers a hypnopaedic message from her childhood. Things such as family and love are now considered foreign and dangerous ideas which get in the way of the superficial happiness under the World State. It is Mustapha Mond as he explains how life before the World State consisted of things which distracted people from being happy. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy.”

No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. High spurts the fountain fierce and foamy the wild jet. Brave New World – Quotations and Analysis

Brave new world quotes about taking soma