Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mortal Engines, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Class
Sacrifice
Dangers of Technology
The Importance of History
Prejudice and First Impressions
Friendship
Summary
Analysis
London moves across the region once known as Europe. Crome stops for nothing, not even the scavenger towns along the way. Meanwhile, down in the Gut of London, Katherine goes with Dog to talk with Apprentice Engineer Pod, who may have witnessed Tom’s fall into the trash chute. She pretends to be interviewing Pod on behalf of her father (Valentine).
Because of her father’s high position, Katherine is used to being able to do whatever she wants. Her recent interview with Crome and her trip into the Gut will test the limits of what she can get away with, however.
Themes
Katherine visits a part of the Gut where work conditions are particularly harsh and the workers stand around in excrement all day. A supervisor explains that the workers are all convicts. When they find Pod, he is trying to help another worker who is sick. Sick workers get sent to “K Division,” but the supervisor refuses to say what that means, and so Pod does too.
When Katherine finally gets to talk with Pod alone, he refuses to acknowledge that he saw Hester and Valentine, apologizing that he can’t help. All of a sudden, the sick worker near Pod sighs heavily, and Katherine realize he’s dead (and that the people in “K Division” work with corpses). Katherine is horrified, and the supervisor tries to rush her out.
Conditions in the Gut are so bad that death seems unexceptional to the supervisors down there. Katherine’s shock indicates how ignorant many people in London are about the work that goes into keeping their city moving.
Themes
