AUTHOR'S EDIT: I lied. Soma does not come from 1984, but rather from A Brave New World. In high school, we read the two books back-to-back, and I've apparently taken parts from each story and fused them together to create my own. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused. :)
Katie
The truth is sometimes hard to handle and sometimes leads to unhappiness, but knowing the truth is one of the greatest human experiences. However, Bokononism sees truth as a problem, something detrimental to mankind. The solution? Eliminate truth altogether, and replace it with foma. When I first saw Vonnegut's invented term, I was reminded immediately of the word soma in George Orwell's book, 1984, is satire about a society in which truth, among many other things, is evil and is to be avoided at all costs. To keep truth at bay, people take soma, a drug that acts as an anti-depressant, so as to mask truths and replace them with happiness and a sense of freedom from the evil and sadness that truth often brings. In the Cat's Cradle, foma is an idea instead of a tangible object, but it still has the same effect as soma, in that it masks truth with lies, therefore bringing happiness.
The definition that Vonnegut gives for foma is "harmless untruths", a nice way of saying, "it's cool to lie, as long as everyone is happy". It sounds like a euphemism to me (Orwell would have called it "doublespeak"). Foma isn't bad, but Vonnegut can't really get away with calling it "beneficial untruths", because the lies being told are not beneficial or helpful to society in the long run.
Lies are like band-aids. They cover up the ugly truth (reality) for a while, but when it's time to take the band-aid off, the injury is still there. Is truth really that horrible that it has to be hidden at any cost? Truth isn't always negative; a lot of good comes from knowing the truth. The truth helps us to grow as moral people, and to learn from our mistakes. Yes, the world can be a very unhappy place, but without the sadness and pain, we wouldn't be able to enjoy happiness and the good in the world. The truth is part of who we are, and lying to ourselves will never change that.
I completely agree with you in that lies are like band-aids. It provides a good visual to stress your point that truth is necessary in order to retain healthy morals. I'm reminded of the phrase, "The truth will set you free." The more we cover up the truth, the more we cripple ourselves. I think this is Vonnegut's main point-to satirize white lies or "harmless untruths". In his own humorous way, he shows us the real truth- that lies, no matter how small, are unhealthy- by telling lies. It's a paradox, but that's what makes the story unique and challenging.
ReplyDeleteI find it really ironic that you associated the word "foma" with the word "soma" from the book "1984" because it just so happens that "foma" also reminded me of the word "soma", but not from that particular book. Instead, it was familiar to me through the book "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. In this book, soma basically takes the same form as it does in "1984". It is a pill that the people take in order to escape from the truths of life because the truth is their entire lives are basically one big lie.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with what you have said about the truth being necessary sometimes. If we all lived in a world of lies, as it is shown in "A Brave New World" things are bound to end up poorly in the end. Just as you said, sometimes we need to hear the bad stuff in order to appreciate the good stuff. Although I do believe that lying does have its place, I can still see how the truth is necessary in every persons life.
I also find the foma-soma connection really interesting. If you look at the back of the book, you see that Time stated that, "Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligar and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer...A zany but moral mad scientist." I guess Time thought that Cat's Cradle and 1984 may have had some similarities too.
ReplyDeleteThat exact parallel came into mind when I was reading this! The soothing effects of Brave New World's soma reminded me exactly of Bokononism's fomas. They are the seemingly harmless escape routes for the novels' jaded characters from a world of pain. Just as "A gram in time saves nine", a good helping of foma could certainly do much good against a gram of ice nine. (I was so compelled to add that; I am sorry haha)
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, Orwell drew his Big Brother idea and all that of _1984_ from Huxley's novel. So the thought that soma came from _1984_ isn't all that terrible, nor is it all that rare! Of course, my question is: can "knowing the truth" truly (!) be one of the greatest "human experiences"? Whether yes or no, how would we necessarily know? I think this gets directly to the heart of all three of the novels that have been put into play here: when belief is constructed, with what are we ultimately left?
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