Mortal Engines

by

Philip Reeve

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Social Class Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Social Class Theme Icon
Sacrifice Theme Icon
Dangers of Technology Theme Icon
The Importance of History Theme Icon
Prejudice and First Impressions Theme Icon
Friendship Theme Icon
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 Theme Icon

The world of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines has strictly defined social classes. Much of the story takes place in the Traction City of London, where people live in different Tiers based on their social class. Class also plays a role in “Municipal Darwinism,” where the big urban predator cities like London have an advantage against smaller rural and suburban prey cities, consuming them to take their resources—and where wandering scavengers rank below even prey cities, struggling to survive on scraps. The various class distinctions in the book all serve the same function, benefitting the people in the higher classes and giving them a way to control the people in the lower classes. Crome, for example, keeps his position at the top as Lord Mayor of London by sending anyone who opposes him into the prison labor camps in the Gut, at the very bottom of London’s social hierarchy.

But while social class defines many aspects of the lives of the characters, it doesn’t necessarily reflect a character’s personality or morals. While some upper-class characters like Katherine are kind and caring, most are more like her father, Thaddeus Valentine, who is the most esteemed Historian in London, and yet is willing to kill anyone who gets in his way—even Hester Shaw, who might be his own daughter. On the other hand, Bevis Pod is a lowly prisoner in the Gut who seems simple-minded when Katherine first meets him, but he eventually reveals himself to be surprisingly good at science. Both Valentine and Pod claim to want to protect Katherine, but while the lower-class Pod actually gives his life to save her, Valentine is the one who ends up accidentally killing his daughter. With a couple of exceptions (such as the small-town slave-trader Orme Wreyland), the lower-class characters tend to act more nobly than the actual nobles. Mortal Engines explores the arbitrary nature of class systems, generally depicting the upper class as hypocrites who did nothing to deserve their lofty positions and depicting the lower class more sympathetically as victims of an unjust system.

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Social Class Quotes in Mortal Engines

Below you will find the important quotes in Mortal Engines related to the theme of Social Class.
Chapter 1 Quotes

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Thaddeus Valentine was Tom’s hero: a former scavenger who had risen to become London’s most famous archaeologist—and also its Head Historian, much to the envy and disgust of people like Pomeroy. Tom kept a picture of him tacked to the dormitory wall above his bunk, and he had read his books, Adventures of a Practical Historian and America Deserta—Across the Dead Continent with Gun, Camera and Airship, until he knew them by heart.

Related Characters: Tom Natsworthy, Thaddeus Valentine, Chudleigh Pomeroy
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

“Ask him!” she screamed. “Ask him what he did to Hester Shaw!”

Related Characters: Hester Shaw (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Thaddeus Valentine
Related Symbols: Scar
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“The law!” she scoffed. “Valentine is the law in London. Isn’t he the Lord Mayor’s favourite? Isn’t he the Head Historian? No, he’ll kill me unless I kill him first.”

Related Characters: Hester Shaw (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Thaddeus Valentine, Magnus Crome
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Magnus Crome had been ruler of London for nearly twenty years, but he still didn’t look like a Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayors in Katherine’s history books were chubby, merry, red-faced men, but Crome was as thin as an old crow, and twice as gloomy.

Related Characters: Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw, Thaddeus Valentine, Katherine Valentine, Magnus Crome
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“Yes, I know, and I’m terribly sorry about it, but what can I do?” said Wreyland sadly. “Times are hard, you know.”

Related Characters: Orme Wreyland (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw, Thaddeus Valentine, Magnus Crome
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“It’s made of junk!” he gasped.

“Junk?” laughed Miss Fang. “Why, the Jenny Haniver is built from bits of the finest airships that ever flew! An envelope of silicon-silk from a Shan Guo clipper, twin Jeunet-Carot aero-engines off a Paris gunship, the reinforced gas-cells of a Spitzbergen war-balloon... It’s amazing what you can find in the scrapyards...”

Related Characters: Tom Natsworthy (speaker), Miss Anna Fang (speaker), Hester Shaw
Related Symbols: Scar
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

“I WORK FOR THE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON NOW,” said Shrike. “HE HAS SENT ME TO KILL YOU.”

Tom whimpered again. Hester gave a brittle little laugh. “But ... you won’t do it, will you, Shrike? You wouldn’t kill me?”

“YES,” said Shrike flatly, still staring down at her.

Related Characters: Hester Shaw (speaker), Shrike (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Thaddeus Valentine, Magnus Crome
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“We don’t stand a chance against Shrike in the air,” she explained. “Hopefully on the ground I can outwit him.”

Related Characters: Hester Shaw (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Shrike
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

Above it flapped a black and white flag; a grinning skull and two crossed bones.

“Great Quirke!” gasped Tom. “This is a pirate suburb!”

Related Characters: Tom Natsworthy (speaker), Nikolas Quirke, Chrysler Peavey
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

“What does she mean, K Division?” asked Katherine.

Related Characters: Katherine Valentine (speaker), Thaddeus Valentine, Bevis Pod
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

“I want Tunbridge Wheels to turn into a city, a proper big city wiv me as Lord Mayor, sumfink I can ‘and down to me sprogs. And you Tommy, I want you to tell me how a city ought to be, and teach me manners. Ettyket, like. So I can hob nob wiv’ other Lord Mayors and not ‘ave them laugh at me behind my back.”

Related Characters: Chrysler Peavey (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Magnus Crome
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“Nor will we have to go chasing after scraps like Salthook,” Crome continued. “In another week London will be within range of Batmunkh Gompa, the Shield-Wall. For a thousand years the Anti-Traction League has cowered behind it, holding out against the tide of history. MEDUSA will destroy it at a single stroke.”

Related Characters: Magnus Crome (speaker)
Related Symbols: Shield-Wall
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

“No!” Katherine heard herself say. “Oh, no, no, no!” She started to run across the garden, staring towards the lightning-flecked cloud which wreathed the wreckage of the conurbation. From Circle Park and all the observation platforms came the sound of wordless voices, and she thought at first that they were crying out in horror, the way she wanted to—but no; they were cheering, cheering, cheering.

Related Characters: Katherine Valentine (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Magnus Crome
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

“I may be no better than Valentine,” she went on, “but there is a difference between us. Valentine tried to kill you, and I want to keep you alive. So, will you come with me?”

Related Characters: Miss Anna Fang (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw, Thaddeus Valentine
Page Number: 197
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“I try to be nice,” she said. “Nobody’s ever made me feel they like me before, the way you do. So I try to be kind and smiley, like you want me to be, but then I catch sight of my reflection or I think of him and it all goes wrong and I can only think horrible things and scream at you and try and hurt you. I’m sorry.”

Related Characters: Hester Shaw (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Shrike
Related Symbols: Scar
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

And light burst down from above; the harsh beam of an airship’s searchlight raking across the snow. The aviatrix reeled blindly backwards, and Valentine leaped up, snatching his sword, pulling her hard against him as he drove it home. For a moment the two of them stumbled together like drunken dancers at the end of a party, close enough to Tom’s hiding place for him to see the bright blade push out through the back of Miss Fang’s neck and hear her desperate, choking whisper: “Hester Shaw will find you. She will find you and—”

Related Characters: Miss Anna Fang (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw, Thaddeus Valentine
Page Number: 233
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

He said, “You must understand, Kate, I did it for you...”

Related Characters: Thaddeus Valentine (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw, Katherine Valentine, Miss Anna Fang, Magnus Crome, Pandora Shaw
Page Number: 242
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

“So, Apprentice Melliphant, I gather you have something to tell us?”

Related Characters: Magnus Crome (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Katherine Valentine, Bevis Pod, Chudleigh Pomeroy, Herbert Melliphant , Clyde “Clytie” Potts
Page Number: 251
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

She had come to think of Bevis Pod as a sweet, clumsy, rather useless person, someone who needed her to look after him, and she suspected that that was how the Historians all thought of him as well. But that afternoon she had begun to understand that he was really much cleverer than her.

Related Characters: Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw, Katherine Valentine, Bevis Pod
Related Symbols: Scar
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

“I’ll be dead in twenty minutes, Tom,” she said. “Just get yourself safe away. Forget about me.”

“I’ll circle back...”

“I’ll be dead.”

“I’ll circle back anyway...”

Related Characters: Tom Natsworthy (speaker), Hester Shaw (speaker), Thaddeus Valentine, Miss Anna Fang
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

Hester was stumbling backwards, lifting her bound hands to ward off Father’s blow, and Katherine flung herself between them so that suddenly it was she who was in his path, and his sword slid easily through her and she felt the hilt jar hard against her ribs.

Related Characters: Hester Shaw, Thaddeus Valentine, Katherine Valentine, Bevis Pod
Page Number: 286
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

He gently moves a stray strand which has blown into her mouth, and holds her close, and waits—and the storm-light breaks over them and they are a knot of fire, a rush of blazing gas, and gone: the shadows of their bones scattering into the brilliant sky.

Related Characters: Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw, Thaddeus Valentine, Katherine Valentine
Page Number: 293
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

“But we’re alive, and together, and we’re going to be all right.”

Related Characters: Hester Shaw (speaker), Tom Natsworthy, Thaddeus Valentine
Related Symbols: Scar
Page Number: 296
Explanation and Analysis: