Caroline Harms

Ms. Stacey Dearing

ENGL 106
17 February 2015
Dystopian Review
2 B R 0 2 B is a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut. This piece is a very quick read. What it
lacks in length, it makes up for in empty holes which the mind of the reader must struggle to both dig at
and fill. Vonnegut presents a dystopia built on tests of morality and humanity of an ever-growing world. I
would not lightly recommend this story. However, I would recommend it with insightful considerations
on how to approach and what to take away from 2 B R 0 2 B. Vonneguts representation of a world
without regards to human morality and a skewed value of life and death causes the reader to pull from
their own heart just exactly what the meaning of human life is.
To begin, Vonnegut describes a world in which there is perfect peace. There is no crime, prisons,
disease or aging. Because of this death is an adventure for volunteers (Vonnegut). The term volunteers
is used because persons must volunteer to die in order to allow a baby to be born into the world. This
system is in place to keep the population at a constant in a world where people do not naturally live and
die. The entire setting takes place in a very quiet, empty hospital. This is important because hospitals are a
place of sickness, disease, life, healing and death. Hospitals represent a progressive society, where new
medicines are implemented every day to better the people with in it. In this world, however, hospitals are
barren places due to the uncommon occasion of birth in this dystopian society.
Continuing, there is a man in the hospital hired to create a mural. The image consists of many
employees of the hospital, doctors and nurses, in a very neat garden (Vonnegut). The hospital
employees in the painting wear white. They are depicted by tending to the garden in pleasant ways,
turning soil, plating seedlings, spraying bugs and planting fertilizer. The nurses and doctors allow for life.
They prepare newborns for the world, eradicate disease and ensure an endless life for the fresh addition to
the population. In contrast, the painter has people in purple uniforms. These are the terminators; those
who end the lives of volunteers willing to cut the cord on their otherwise everlasting experience. In the
painting they are pulling weeds, trimming sickly plants, raking leaves and carrying the trash to burners.
As for the scenery of the painting, the garden is impeccably tended to. Every plant all the loam,
light, water, air and nourishment it could use (Vonnegut). This represents the intended utopia of this

inhumane society. In this story, the painter represents a man keen on his surroundings. With unnatural
population control, everyone is ensured all of the space and resources they need. He understands his
world is unnatural and immoral, and although he is commissioned to create a prosperous image he paints
it with truth.
Another example of this society being unnatural involves the women working as terminators. The
terminators. ..
Vonnegut phrases the humans carefully saying, the population of the United States was
stabilized at forty-million souls (Vonnegut). Notice souls is used as if the taking one man for the
giving of another is as simple as trading vessels. That there are truly only forty million souls on the
planet, and that the birth of a new baby is really the birth of a new vessel for the replacement of an old
vessel so the soul may continue on forever. At least, for me, this is a mind-boggling idea that bloomed
while taking the time to really analyze this story. The story strongly requires one to reconsider what they
truly feel about human life and death. To uncover existential feelings they have about the world around
them. This is exactly why fiction is so important.