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Chapter 1
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
Pomeroy lectures Tom about obedience and gives him extra chores. He sends him to the Gut where workers take apart the towns that London eats. Work in the Gut is grueling and some of the workers are convicts. Machines have already started tearing apart Salthook. Tom makes his way to the Historian warehouse. Salthook doesn’t have much in the way of historical salvage, with no museum or library. When Tom makes it to the supervisor’s office, he’s surprised to see that the person on duty is Thaddeus Valentine, a famous archaeologist and the Head Historian. He is also Tom’s personal hero.
The Gut extends the metaphor that London is a living creature that needs to eat and digest food (even though that’s not actually the case, and in fact London is just all machinery). The presence of convict-workers in the Gut suggests that, while Tom might not be at the very top of London society, there are also people who fall far below him in the social ranks.
Themes
Tom met Valentine a couple years ago when Tom won an essay contest. To Tom’s surprise, Valentine still remembers him. Valentine seems amused by Tom’s black eye (from the fight with Melliphant). He asks Tom about his background and Tom tells about how his parents died in the Big Tilt when he was so young that he barely remembers them. Valentine tells him his parents were talented Historians.
Tom’s initial impression of Valentine is that he’s kind and thoughtful. Valentine takes the time to remember Tom, even though Tom himself is much less important in the city and in the Historian Guild than Valentine is. For now, that seems to confirm Tom’s impression of Valentine.
Themes
Just then a large wolf walks into the office, scaring Tom. A girl tells the wolf to behave, and it becomes meek. She is Katherine, Valentine’s daughter, and the wolf is Dog, a creature that Valentine brought back from an expedition. Dog likes Tom, and Katherine says this is a good sign. Valentine tells Tom that they just have a few things to look at, but Tom should be able to leave the Gut soon.
Although Katherine seems like a refined young lady, being the daughter of the city’s most distinguished historian, her connection to the wild creature Dog suggests that she might not be exactly who she appears to be on the surface.
Themes
Valentine, Tom, Dog, and Katherine all go down several sets of stairs to the Digestion Yards. As they survey the remains of Salthook, Tom hopes to find something impressive in the wreckage to impress Valentine and Katherine. He finds a “seedy” (CD) that the Ancients used to store information. According to Valentine, Ancients had electronic machines much more advanced than anything that exists in the current era, although they didn’t have Traction Cities.
Like the statues of Pluto and Mickey in the museum earlier, the CD is another relic from the past that the people of the future don’t quite understand. This future London seems to be both more technologically advanced than the real world yet also behind in some ways. In particular, computers play less of a role in Traction Cities than readers might expect.
Themes
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There are also some scavengers who came aboard when London caught Salthook. They live on land and move around on foot, a lifestyle that horrifies Tom. They wear ragged clothes as they search for old technology to scavenge. One of the scavengers is a girl in a black head-scarf. She says she has something interesting for Valentine, then all of a sudden, she pulls out a knife.
The scavengers show that the class system extends even beyond the limits of London, with people outside the city falling into their own category of people. As the action of the novel picks up, chapters will often end on cliffhangers, like here.
Themes
