The Conversation writes about the controversies of Soma, a drug in Brave New World, and how it is affecting its characters. The article compares how babies are treated in the novel, to how advertising can affect young children.
Advertising has always targeted the younger generations. This is the point I agree with the most from the article, because as a child I remember 99% of the commercials on Disney Channel were toy ads. They were designed to get my attention, then to make me want the toy so bad that I go and tell my parents that I want that toy, which will hopefully convince them to get it for me. This same thing occurs with the children in the novel. They are conditioned to have a “hatred of books and flowers” because those things are found to invoke freedom (Huxley 22).
The D.H.C. goes on to say that instead of intellectual books and flowers, the children have been conditioned to “love all country sports” because it increases transportation use (Huxley 23). The leaders have chosen to act on the children’s vulnerability to profit and control them. The manipulation of young minds has always been important to marketing strategies, because they’re simply vulnerable. They’re easy to manipulate, especially without a parent in the novel, and can be psychologically damaged by this behavior.
This manipulation can lead to substance abuse. We’ve seen it with the tobacco industry, and the malicious targeting that they had done to younger people in order to persuade them to just try one, just one, it won’t hurt.
This article perfectly sums up how the World State operates directly through the use of manipulation and through that drugs.
Sampson, Tony D. “Brave New World: the Pill-Popping, Social Media Obsessed Dystopia We Live In.” The Conversation, The Conversation, 9 Oct. 2018, theconversation.com/brave-new-world-the-pill-popping-social-media-obsessed-dystopia-we-live-in-72511.
Brave New World 