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Chapter 20
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
Back in London, the city continues to flee from Panzerstadt-Bayreuth. Crome sends Beefeater guards to put down riots in the Gut. Meanwhile, disguised in goggles and a rubber suit, Katherine and Pod infiltrate the Engineerium, where many Engineers are gathering for an important meeting.
Beefeaters are the name of the real royal guard in Britain today, and so the fact that the term Beefeater survives in this future London suggests that ideas from the past can remain but take on new forms.
Themes
Inside the Engineerium, Katherine and Pod manage to successfully convince the people around them that they’re Guild members. Katherine overhears some Engineers talking about an upcoming test of MEDUSA. They mention that Valentine himself found MEDUSA and brought it to Crome. Eventually, Katherine and Pod make it to an auditorium where Crome is standing at a lectern on stage. He tells everyone to be seated.
Katherine continues to get bolder and bolder about the ways that she investigates what’s going on with her father. Pod has the most to lose if he gets caught, so his agreement with Katherine’s plan shows that he is brave and that he trusts Katherine.
Themes
A slide projector shows a diagram behind Crome of a big, complicated-looking machine. Crome proclaims that it’s MEDUSA. He explains how MEDUSA will be able to turn rival cities into dust and how it will even allow them to breach the Shield-Wall of the Anti-Traction League. He says they’re about to do a test-firing of the weapon. All of a sudden, Katherine feels that she has to get out of the auditorium, and Pod follows her.
After teasing MEDUSA for the first half of the book, Crome is about to give a full presentation, cluing readers in to what the weapon is and what it does. Katherine has a very negative reaction to the prospect of MEDUSA’s violence, recalling her disgust earlier when she witnessed the conditions in the Gut. Her negative reaction may also be because her father helped contribute to finding MEDUSA.
Themes
Katherine is angry, believing that Crome lied and that Valentine never wanted anything to do with old weapons, but Pod isn’t sure why Crome would lie about that. They try to find a way out of the Engineerium, but they need to take a monorail and there are none in sight. Suddenly, they hear a rumble. They look out and see the dome of St. Paul’s opening.
Like Tom, Katherine has a hard time accepting the truth about Valentine because she still wants to trust Valentine’s kind outer appearance. In fact, she has a harder time than Tom because Valentine isn’t just an admired figure, but her own father. The opening of St. Paul’s suggests that MEDUSA is inside and that in this new London, MEDUSA and massive weapons like it have taken over the former role of religion.
Themes
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