Was and will make me ill, I take a gramme and only am

The expression “Was and will make me ill, I take a gramme and only am” is a sleep-taught rhyme that compresses the World State’s preference for chemically secured present-tense happiness into a memorable contrast between temporal unease and immediate relief. When Lenina quotes it to Bernard, the slogan is not just a statement of belief: it helps move him from fear to taking soma.

Wording and Function

The rhyme opposes “Was and will”—past and future, both figured as sources of illness—to the present-tense “only am.” Its clipped cadence makes the remedy sound simple: take a gramme, and exist in an undisturbed now. The phrasing reduces emotional difficulty to a condition that can be treated, while making attention to time beyond the present seem harmful.

Use in the Scene

Lenina recites the line as Bernard is appalled by the prospect that the Director’s threats will be carried out. His imagined courage has collapsed now that he believes the threat of transfer to Iceland is real. She shakes her head and quotes the rhyme; in the end, she persuades him to swallow four tablets of soma. Five minutes later, his distress has been displaced by the drug’s effect, and the porter’s message brings news that a Reservation Guard is waiting with a plane.

Social and Narrative Significance

The expression gives a compact voice to a social order that manages distress by discouraging reflection and chemically smoothing feeling. Its promise of being wholly present is pointedly attached to taking soma: relief arrives not through Bernard’s recovery of the courage he had imagined, but through the suppression of the fear confronting him. In the scene, the rhyme therefore functions both as familiar conditioning and as an instrument of persuasion, carrying Lenina’s prescribed answer directly into Bernard’s action.