As in Naked Lunch, sexuality, drugs, and power are the three types of control, but The Soft Machine gives different emphasis to these themes and also adds the theme of revolt.
Sexuality as a means of social control is the major theme of The Soft Machine, leading to a predominance of sexual scenes and Burroughs's repertoire of sexual imagery: memories and fantasies of adolescent homosexual and autoerotic experiences, travel South, South American people and places, tropical climate (warmth, humidity, steaminess), plant life (especially jungles, vines, plant juice and slime), primitive and amorphous life forms (jelly, slime, protoplasm, tissue), water (rivers, mud, showers), refuse (mud, sewage, garbage, slime, compost heaps), odors of decomposiition, the carnival (penny arcades, Interzone-like carnival cities of sexual activity), the withdrawal orgasm, and the orgasm-death of hanging or other torture... displayed 300 characters
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This imagery is drawn from personal experience, popular cultural stereotypes, and literary tradition (in particular, Burroughs includes in cutup form the city and water imagery from The Waste Land). Characterization in The Soft Machine is so minimal that characters become motifs rather than persons. Characters associated with the sexual theme are drawn from autobiography (memories and personal fantasies), anthropological fantasy (imaginary South American tribes with unusual sexual practices; Carl the traveler), historical fantasy Uohnny Yen-the transsexual Survival Artist of the ages, the Countess de Vile-the decadent jetsetter, ancient priests serving the Corn God and the Earth Mother), the science-fiction Nova mythology (the Venus Mob, the Vegetable People, the Green Boys), and other literature (Danny Deever, Melville's Billy Budd, the hanged god of T... displayed 300 characters
