In place of passion, citizens of the World State receive instant gratification through scientific creations such as feelies, Violent Passion Surrogate and soma. Soma is a pill that makes the user euphoric—like alcohol without the side effects. The happiness and success of the World State depends heavily on soma because as the Controller says, “‘…If anything should go wrong, there’s soma’” (Huxley, 220). To prevent unhappiness or instability, people rely on soma to provide to escape from any uncomfortable situation rather than deal with their own emotions. The Controller explains, “ ‘there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long suffering” (Huxley, 238). The products of science are an outlet for passion for the citizens of the World State. In the same sense that the World State uses conditioning to engineer happiness, soma is also a product of science that is used to control intangible human emotion. The role of soma reflects the powerful influence of science and technology on society. Science plays such a dominant role in human happiness that science takes on the role of religion in Brave New World. “You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is” (Huxley, 238). Happiness and morals based on science shows how the happiness of the people in the World State is artificial. To replace passion and emotional connections, the people of the World State rely on products of science such as soma.
In the world that is known to people today, there is no soma. People deal with their emotions. There is poverty, history, families and love; there is truth. Truth involves knowing the good and the bad, experiencing happiness and sadness. John, who grew up on the savage reservation, has lived in the world outside the World State. He has seen truth. In his conversation with the Controller, John claims, “I don’t want comfort, I want God, I want poetry… I want goodness. I want sin” (Huxley, 240). John chooses truth over happiness, “claiming the right to be unhappy” (Huxley, 240). In context with Plato’s cave allegory, he chose face the outside of the cave. In facing the hard nature of life, John has lost his innocence and matured. According to Plato, once someone from the dark becomes accustomed to the light and see the truth, he will see “not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is” (Plato). John does not see himself as just another “reflection” of a product of the World State. He thinks beyond what he has been taught, pouring through Shakespearian works and forming morals of his own. He refrained his desire for Lenina, unlike Bernard who later reflected, “‘… We went to bed together yesterday—like infants—instead of being adults and waiting’” (Huxley, 94) Truth in Brave New World is presented through the character John, who chooses to face the harshness of truth and be an adult with respectable morals. Unlike the people of the World State, John thinks with him heart and mind—his super ego. Knowing and accepting the good and the bad of truth demonstrates maturity and super-ego.
John, like all the other citizens in Brave New World, can only choose truth or happiness. The people living as a part of the World State have artificial lives, but they are happy. On the other hand, John chooses truth, but he commits suicide at the end of the novel. John is the opposite of everything the World State stands for. Although it may seem as if the World State is a utopia where everyone is happy, in reality, Huxley created a dystopia that questions the happiness. Humans are treated in a peculiarly disturbing fashion as shown by this quote: “‘So many individuals, of such and such quality,’ said Mr. Foster. ‘Distributed in such and such quantities’” (Huxley, 10). Ironically, by being distributed in such quantities, the people are not individuals at all. They are treated as a mass of products for the World State. Like what Pfeiffer expresses, “A civilization ordered solely by science, sex, and drugs kills the spirit. People become mere cattle. ‘Savagery’ may be preferable” (Pfeiffer). Considering the citizens of the World State are treated like animals to receive their happiness, truth and individuality is the better option.
Characters in Brave New World have to fight for their individuality by fighting for the truth. At the beginning of the novel, Bernard claims, “ ‘I’d rather be myself… Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly” (Huxley, 89). John also fights to keep his truth, and even though he commits suicide in the end, “other persons in the novel might die, but only the death of the Savage can be profoundly tragic” (Pfeiffer). True, John suffered hardships in living with the truth, but at the end of the day, John’s life as an individual meant something, while the life of others’ did not. John’s feelings came from his heart—his id. True happiness comes from the heart, not from being conditioned to believe in happiness. Bernard, John and Helmoltz separate at the end of the novel: “There was a silence. In spite of their sadness—because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another—the three young men were happy (Huxley, 242)”—truly happy. Their happiness despite the sadness and the truth shines through the artificial happiness of the World State. In The Republic, Plato agrees with the importance of truth: “Good… is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right… and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual…This is the power upon which he…must have his eye fixed” (Plato). Although the truth is harder to deal with than ignorance, the emotion and spiritual satisfaction of being truly happy should be what everyone strives for and cannot be achieved without accepting truth. Ignorantly blissful is easy, but in Brave New World, happiness achieved through animalistic methods is meaningless compared to the fulfillment of true happiness.
In Brave New World, happiness and truth are separated. Citizens of the World State are happy in an artificial society, while in contrast, John lives an unpleasant but truthful life. People may instinctively want to sacrifice truth take the easy path to happiness, but being able to fully appreciate happiness through the hardships of truth is what makes life worth living. Truth or happiness? That is the final thought Huxley leaves with the reader at the end of the book when John is dangling, slowly turning in directionless circles.
Works Cited
Huxley, Aldous. Brave new world,. New York: Harper & Bros., 1946. Print.
Pfeiffer, John R. "Aldous (Leonard) Huxley." Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. Ed. Everett Franklin Bleiler. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982. Scribner Writers Series. Web. 7 Dec. 2011.
"Plato's Cave." My Webspace files. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2011. <http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html>.