The Power of The System in Aldous Huxley’s

  Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, born on July 26, 1894 in England. He writes about the “doom” of civilization and how it is just around the corner. As a child, he showed signs of great intellectual power and grew up to be a successful novelist and essayist writer. In his chilling and futuristic novel Brave New World, published in 1932, Huxley tells his readers a story about the horrors of the future. Huxley writes in his novel that humans are created via the Bokanovsky process, a process which creates humans much like an assembly line produces cars, and that a powerful drug called soma, controls and succumbs its user, eventually stabilizing the entire population so no one tries to question the authority of the World State. In Brave New World soma is the religion of the people in the World State much like Karl Marx states in the Communist Manifesto: “Religion is the Opium of the Masses.”

            All the characters in Brave New World had some degree of physical or personality trait that made them unconventional or different, but for their problems, they resort to a powerful drug called soma. Much like in present day, religions help to ease the pain of its followers, make their followers feel normal when they pray to their god or attend their church, and receive the preaching of their religion. In the World State, the masses are controlled by the use of soma and encouraged every civilian to use it in their everyday life. This drug, soma, made its user stable and pain free, and by controlling its user, the World State authorities could govern a more stable society. The World State uses this powerful drug as tool in order to stabilize society, and eliminate individuality from its citizens. The World State had its rule like any other country has, but these rules would be criticized by present day cultures for being unconstitutional and unorthodox. The citizens of the World State complied with such rules and those who broke the status quo of society would be punished and exiled.  The values and morals of the World State would be considered wrong by any other modern day culture, but the system is too strong for the citizens to think outside the box and instead of conforming to these ideals and morals, question and challenge them.