Mustapha Mond Soma Rhetorical Analysis Essay

This passage is noteworthy as it offers insight into how soma is a device that removes individuality and suppresses emotions. Aldous Huxley comments on the issue of how ignorant bliss can result in easier manipulation. Soma, as described by Mustapha Mond, is “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant” (47). When taken, this drug offers instant relief and gratification without any consequences or side effects. When the user feels uncomfortable or starts to think on their own, they are programmed to take soma and forget about their problems, thereby removing any chance of an unhappy citizen thinking in unorthodox manners. This is representative of suppressing human emotion and substituting it with a faux reality until the user reverts back to
the state of a mindless drone. From this, it can be inferred that soma is simply another medium for the State to manipulate the behaviour of its people to maintain ‘social stability’, or in other words, ensuring an iron grip on how its people are allowed to think. How the entire passage is written gives to the oxymoron of controlled happiness: the passage is extremely explicit as it uses a tone which is suggestive of what one must do (which is depicted by how the passage is almost entirely dedicated to how much soma a person must take to achieve certain effects), instead of what one should do.