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Chapter 26
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
As London heads toward the Shield-Wall, Katherine spends most of her time in the Museum. She likes spending time with Pod more and more, and she wonders if she’s even falling in love with him. One day when Katherine is in the museum, Dog takes an interest in the fossil of an extinct animal called the blue whale. As Katherine examines the display case, she notices that the discovery is credited to Pandora Shaw.
Katherine’s friendship and possible romance with Pod is similar to Hester and Tom’s slowly unfolding, unlikely relationship. The fossil of the blue whale suggests that pollution has caused species that used to exist to go extinct, filling in more details about the postapocalyptic world these characters inhabit.
Themes
Katherine tries to remember why Pandora’s name sounds so familiar. She realizes that Pandora is Hester Shaw’s mother and that before, when her name was Pandora Rae, she was Valentine’s assistant. Katherine hears from the other Historians that Pandora was murdered with her husband about seven years ago, around the exact same time when Valentine was away in America looking for MEDUSA. Suddenly, Katherine starts to cry, realizing that her father killed Pandora and that’s why Hester wants to kill him.
Like MEDUSA, the name “Pandora” also comes from Greek mythology. Although she isn’t from the same legend as Medusa, Pandora famously opens a box that unleashes all of the evil into the world. The mythological Pandora acted not out of malice but out of curiosity, matching with how the character Pandora also didn’t plan to use MEDUSA for evil.
Themes
