How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Part.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Half an hour later they were back in his rooms. Bernard swallowed four tablets of soma at a gulp, turned on the radio and television and began to undress. (6.1.43)
We only see Bernard take soma when he wants to fit in with the rest of society. He needs to cloud his mind to pretend he's like everyone else. In a way, this is the beginning of the end for the admirable, rebellious Bernard we all know and love in the first half of the novel.
Quote #8
"You don't say so," said Lenina politely, not knowing in the least what the Warden had said, but taking her cue from his dramatic pause. When the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden's face in an expression of rapt attention. (6.3.19)
Incessant and unquestioning soma use seems to be a quality common to the female characters in Brave New World. For this and other reasons, there are a fair number of scholars who label the work misogynistic.
Quote #9
Lenina shook her head. "Was and will make me ill," she quoted, "I take a gramme and only am."
In the end she persuaded him to swallow four tablets of soma. Five minutes later roots and fruits were abolished; the flower of the present rosily blossomed. A message from the porter announced that, at the Warden's orders, a Reservation Guard had come round with a plane and was waiting on the roof of the hotel. They went up at once. An octoroon in Gamma-green uniform saluted and proceeded to recite the morning's programme. (6.3.38-9)
With the news of his deportation, Bernard is given the chance he always wanted—to feel threatened, to feel angry, to feel something. It is one of the great tragedies of his character that he chooses to block this moment out with soma.