29 pages • 58 minutes read
2 B R 0 2 B
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Dystopia/Utopia and Societies of Control
Societies of control and the distinction between utopia and dystopia is a running theme throughout many of Vonnegut’s works, including in his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, in which Billy Pilgrim struggles with the morality of his own actions and the actions of the governments around him.
Dystopian fiction arose initially around the French Revolution. However, modern dystopian fiction did not become popular until the beginning of the 20th century, when the world, and especially the west (North America and Europe) faced existential crises in the form of world wars, fast paced changes in life due to mass modernization of technology, and the fragmentation of familiar institutions (church, state, family, colonies, and so on). Unlike utopian fiction, which imagines an ideal place, dystopian fiction imagines a negative place that is most often authoritarian. Popular examples of dystopian fiction include Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984.
The world of “2 B R 0 2 B” is not a clear dystopia or utopia. Unlike most other dystopian worlds, free will is not fully taken away from the citizens. They have the right to choose whether they want to die and whether they want to have children. If they were to choose to, they could live forever and even have children as long as they found or convinced someone that was willing to die. Wehling and his wife choose to have children and Wehling chooses to kill himself and murder Dr. Hitz and Duncan.
The society that they live in could be considered a utopia. The cost of the utopia, however, is the macabre choice that every inhabitant of the world must make between having children and finding someone to die or giving up the ability to have children. By framing the society this way, Vonnegut points to the absurdity of such controlled choices.
Though Vonnegut is ambiguous about whether such a world is utopian or dystopian, he is unambiguous about the problems that a society of control creates and questions whether control or freedom is better when the results of both can lead to tragedy. Ultimately, the form that Vonnegut uses—satire—gives away his position that any world with such rigid control is dystopian by virtue of its necessary exclusion.
Agency
Wehling’s murder-suicide is a willful act. One of the features of a world in which there is no crime, disease, poverty, aging, or involuntary death is that very few actions can have meaningful consequences. Any wrong choice that can lead to suffering can be rectified relatively easily because there is an abundance of resources. In a world in which choices don’t have meaningful consequences, agency is also limited.
Agency is the capacity to have control over one’s own life. Paradoxically, in order to have control, there must also be meaningful consequences to having or not having control. For instance, if there is no consequence to choosing how or where to be painted other than personal preference, then the agency around that choice is limited. Leora Duncan has some agency, but the result has very little impact on anyone else other than her. She thus has some control over her life, but the control she has over her life doesn’t matter very much. There are only two choices that are meaningful: to have children or to die. At the same time, both choices are regulated. There are rules to birth and there are even rules to how one should die.
The rules around birth and death are very simple. For each person born, one person must die. The social contract of one life in and one life out is fulfilled at the end of the story. Wehling’s act is limited in its agency if it is to be understood as within the frame of the social contract of the world. However, it defies the neatness and the norms of the world. It leaves a mess, and more importantly, it creates both involuntary death and crime in a world in which all death is voluntary and there is no crime. By obeying the law exactly, Wehling creates a new world.
The painter doesn’t shoot himself and instead uses the “2 B R 0 2 B” hotline. Order is restored in the end. However, in his act, Wehling creates a significant disruption and highlights the absurdity of utopia. Vonnegut highlights that agency does not mix well with utopia because agency necessarily inserts desire and unpredictability, while utopia is built around stability and predictability.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is one of the central themes of “2 B R 0 2 B.” Each character in the world must make sacrifices—whether they sacrifice themselves, their loved ones, or their humanity for the sake of a society built around population control through euthanasia. Vonnegut uses sacrifice to comment on the clash between individuals and societies of control.
Wehling’s sacrifice is the most obvious. He is confronted with the choice to sacrifice his children or sacrifice his relatives. His choice to sacrifice himself and murder Dr. Hitz and Duncan for his children highlights the absurdity of a world in which the population is rigidly controlled.
The painter also sacrifices himself. The hostess thanks him for his sacrifice. His sacrifice, however, is more ambiguous than Wehling’s. His sacrifice raises the question of whether a sacrifice depends on intention. While the reader is aware of Wehling’s reasoning and intentions, the painter’s reasoning and intentions are unclear. Vonnegut implies that the painter chooses to die because he is faced with Wehling’s actions and the despair of a utopia created through population control. The theme of sacrifice thus intersects with the theme of agency. Does intention matter for sacrifice? Does stepping outside of the bounds of a society of control matter for sacrifice?
The last form of sacrifice is the sacrifice of Dr. Hitz and Duncan. Dr. Hitz sacrifices his humanity. While he is eventually sympathetic to Wehling’s impossible choice, he is initially cheerful about the news of triplets being born and he has no reaction to the news that the Wehlings only have one volunteer. Similarly, Duncan sacrifices her humanity and her beauty for her work at the Bureau.
Unlock all 29 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
