Mortal Engines

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2001

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-8

Part 1, Chapters 9-12

Part 1, Chapters 13-16

Part 1, Chapters 17-18

Part 1, Chapters 19-23

Part 2, Chapters 24-26

Part 2, Chapters 27-30

Part 2, Chapters 31-34

Part 2, Chapters 35-37

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Losing What We Love Most Due to the Quest for Power

Many of the characters in Mortal Engines seek power in one form or another. Whether for personal reasons or dominion over others, these power-motivated journeys result in loss and grief. Through Crome’s use of MEDUSA, Valentine’s desire to keep his social status, and Hester’s revenge arc, Mortal Engines explores how the quest for power only hurts us.

After Crome discovers MEDUSA’s existence, he lusts after it and what such power could do for London. As the mayor of a once-great predator city that has lost steam, Crome doesn’t consider MEDUSA’s negative destructive capabilities; he sees only its potential to restore London to its former glory. In his quest to get the weapon working and reach the barrier wall to the Anti-Traction cities, Crome lets the lower tiers of London fall to ruin and ignores the suffering of thousands. Crome’s quest for power ultimately leads to an accident that causes MEDUSA to destroy London. The work he does to honor his pride for London is lost because he refuses to consider another way that doesn’t involve mass destruction. His desire for power destroys the city he loves.

Valentine also seeks power—but on a more personal level. He was once a mere scavenger who would sell technology to cities in exchange for scraps of what those cities could offer. MEDUSA gives Valentine an opportunity to better his and Katherine’s lives. Although Valentine knows what the weapon is capable of, he ignores the potential destruction in favor of what retrieving the weapon could do for him. Valentine achieves the status he seeks, but his actions result in Katherine distrusting him and sacrificing herself to save Hester’s life. Valentine’s quest for power gives him what he wants in the short term, but at the end, he loses his life and the life of his daughter, the most important person to him.

Hester has spent the last seven years hunting Valentine to get revenge for the murder of her parents. Vengeance is a form of power to her, as she believes it will give her closure and the feeling that she’s accomplished what her parents failed to do. Not until she sees Katherine sacrifice herself does Hester understand that revenge has no true power. All killing Valentine would do is deprive someone else of a parent and break a family. The ability to hold power over Valentine drove Hester’s hunt, but when she sees that his quest for power leads to his losing what matters most to him, Hester can’t feel angry, and “now that he was at her mercy, she felt nothing at all” (362). Hester realizes that attaining power over Valentine won’t bring her family back or make anything better; it will only cause further destruction.

Choosing power at the expense of others destroys things. Hester’s choice not to pursue her revenge offers a different type of power—the ability to heal and move forward. Her anger gives power to Valentine, who loses his chance to fix things when Katherine dies, but Hester’s action shows how power may be used for good. Had Crome and Valentine sought less destructive ways to achieve status, they might have attained their goals without losing everything they held dear.

The World as More Than What We See

Mortal Engines is told from various perspectives, and those perspectives represent different levels of society, from the highest of the high to a fugitive. Each character forms a view of the world based on their experiences, but those experiences don’t show the entirety of existence. Through Tom’s various experiences of different places and Katherine’s seeing the lower tiers of London, Mortal Engines shows how what we see isn’t everything.

Tom has lived all his 15 years on London, moving from place to place and understanding the importance of the hunt. From the moment he’s tossed off the city, he starts to learn about other ways to live, and as the story progresses, he sees that those ways aren’t inferior to London’s lifestyle. The silence and stillness of the bare earth frightens Tom. He was raised with London propaganda about how movement is life, and he doesn’t understand how anything can survive staying still. However, as he and Hester travel across the Hunting Grounds, Tom sees how various landscapes have been negatively affected by predator cities like London. Away from his limited London viewpoint, Tom realizes that what London considers life means death for the bare earth and for prey towns.

London touts the Anti-Traction League as the ultimate enemy. Like the bare earth of the Hunting Grounds, static cities stay in one place and, according to London, are weak. Tom believes this until he spends time in a static city and sees the beauty of human-made structures coexisting with nature. Unlike the barren wasteland of the Hunting Grounds, static cities give back to the planet rather than simply using it as a means to hunt down the next meal. Tom realizes that his fear of the unknown motivated his hatred of static towns. Once he experiences static life, he understands its benefits and beauty. He doesn’t know if it’s better than traction life in all respects, but he opens his mind to the possibility that static life isn’t a bad thing.

Katherine spends the entire book on London, but her exposure to lower tiers opens her mind just as much as—if not more than—exposure to static cities opens Tom’s. Katherine lives on one of London’s top tiers and leads a sheltered life. She’s never had cause to venture to the lower tiers and believes that everyone lives like she does. Until she begins her investigation into Valentine’s past, she cares only about the frivolous things that high-society people have the luxury to care about, such as clothes and reputation. After Katherine sees the deplorable conditions in the Gut, her entire worldview changes. Seeing how the people below live so that she can have her privilege makes her realize how limited her world has been, and she returns to the top tiers wondering “how [she] could […] enjoy the beauty of High London ever again” (177). Katherine’s world is informed by what she knows, and once she understands that her world isn’t the only one, she’s no longer the same person.

Our lives are built around our experiences, and seeing how others exist can change us for good. Tom’s and Katherine’s worlds change drastically, and both emerge better because of those changes, showing how expanding our views and opening our minds to new ideas can help us grow. Had neither character embarked on this journey, they would have stagnated and never understood the bigger picture of the world at large.

Inner Beauty as True Beauty

The characters of Mortal Engines come in all shapes, sizes, and appearances. Some don’t meet the conventional definition of attractiveness, but their outward appearances don’t matter as much as what’s in their minds and hearts. Through Hester’s appearance, Grike’s story, and Tom’s understanding of home, Mortal Engines shows how real beauty exists within us.

On the night Valentine murdered Hester’s parents, he slashed her face, leaving her with a huge scar. When Tom first sees her, he thinks she’s ugly because she isn’t classically beautiful like Katherine or the other girls Tom daydreams about. As the story progresses and Tom and Hester’s relationship grows, Tom sees beyond Hester’s scarred face to the strong and determined person beneath. At the end of the book, when Tom realizes that Hester survived the 13th Floor Elevator crash in London, he’s overjoyed to see “her ugly, wonderful face” (366). Her face may be ugly, but it’s the most beautiful thing he could see in that moment because who she is beyond her appearance matters more than her face.

As a Stalker, Grike is a humanoid mash-up of wires and other technology. The result is a terrifying being who strikes fear into those who see him. Grike shouldn’t have emotions or memory, but he somehow retains both from before his death and resurrection. As a result, he cares for Hester almost like a father. Although he’s under direct orders to kill her, Grike delays fulfilling those orders for as long as possible because he doesn’t want to harm someone who means so much to him. Grike wants Hester to be a Stalker like him so that they can always be together; however, he loves Hester the way she is and doesn’t want to burden her with his type of existence. Grike may have been a truly selfless person before his death, which might explain why he retains such characteristics in his resurrected state. Grike’s complex feelings show how his beauty lies within and implies that true beauty can’t be destroyed.

While Tom doesn’t have any outstanding physical attributes, he too learns the truth about inner beauty through his journey to find home. Initially, he believes that he can have no home but London, in love as he is with the city’s motion and the image that propaganda has fed him. Once he travels the world outside London and sees how scavengers, small towns, and static cities live, he realizes that different types of homes exist and that he only believed he belonged in London because he knew nothing else. At the end of the book, after most of the places and people Tom cared about are destroyed, he has nothing left but Hester—and Fang’s airship. He finally realizes that his home isn’t about where he lives. It’s about who he is on the inside and how his view influences the beauty of what’s around him.

Beauty comes in many types. Something may be beautiful on both the outside and inside, but an outward appearance may be altered or constructed to fit a purpose. By contrast, inner beauty is revealed in actions and attitudes, which are less easily hidden. We can’t control how others view us based on outward appearance. We can only choose to use our inner beauty to show people who we really are and hope that they see past the surface.