29 pages • 58 minutes read
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.2 B R 0 2 B
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1962A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
The Painter
The painter is the anti-hero and primary protagonist of “2 B R 0 2 B.” Nameless, he is a sardonic old man who is 200 years old but looks 35. Though the primary action of the story does not revolve around him, he observes all of the action and he is the only character whose internal state is revealed through both dialogue and narration.
For most of the story, the painter is begrudgingly painting the mural of the garden with faceless figures whose faces are to be filled in with staff from the hospital and from the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Termination, which is concerned with voluntary suicide. The painting serves as a visual metaphor for the society that the characters inhabit, described by Vonnegut as “neat.” The mural also depicts the fundamental choice that undergirds the society: life or death. However, this fundamental choice and the process of death are depicted in a banal way and made to be pleasant. The painter fundamentally disagrees with this view.
Instead, he sees life as a dirty drop cloth lying on the floor, something chaotic and unsterilized. While such a view of life is bleak, something that the orderly comments on, it’s also a view of life that allows for more agency, which allows for more individuality. The painter is ultimately driven by self-reliance and individuality, telling the orderly initially that if he were to kill himself, he would be the one to do it and embrace the mess that he would cause for others. He advocates for complexity and resists the order that his mural represents.
Despite the painters’ individualistic streak, however, he ultimately decides to use the “2 B R0 2 B” service and schedules an appointment with the Federal Bureau of Termination after witnessing Wehling’s murder-suicide of Dr. Hitz and Leora Duncan. He is unable to shoot himself and leave a mess. His decision points to the difficulty of agency when it comes to questions of life and death. His choice serves as a foil to Wehling’s choice to kill himself and raises the question of the role of desire in sacrifice.
Edward K. Wehling Jr.
Edward K. Wehling Jr. is the only fully named character and the second protagonist. Though Wehling has very little dialogue and is described briefly, the action revolves around him and his decisions.
Wehling is 56 and a relatively young man in a world where the average age is 129. He is “rumpled” and “colorless” and is generally invisible in the waiting room. He refers to himself as “invisible.” Until the arrival of Dr. Hitz, he is largely speechless and is only rarely mentioned. He is waiting for his wife to give birth to triplets and is thus worried and stressed. Vonnegut especially shows this through the exchange between Dr. Hitz and Wehling when Dr. Wehling delivers the news of the triplets’ arrival and Wehling emptily says “hooray.”
He is worried, however, not because of his wife’s delivery, but because when she delivers triplets, he must take his grandfather to the municipal gas chambers to die and then must choose which of the triplets will live. The entirety of the story revolves around Wehling’s decision, and his predicament is the intersection of the themes of Dystopia/Utopia and Societies of Control, Agency, and Sacrifice.
Wehling decides to kill himself, Dr. Hitz (the one responsible for the first gas chamber in Chicago), and Leora Duncan (who makes people comfortable when they die). Wehling’s murders are not only a sacrifice for the life of his children but also a protest against the system. This act of protest works as a foil for the painter’s protest speech. The painter speaks out against the system, but he does not act outside of it. Wehling, on the other hand, does not speak out against the system openly but acts pointedly against it.
Dr. Hitz
A famous man within the world of “2 B R 0 2 B,” Dr. Hitz is the doctor who delivers the news of the triplets’ birth to Wehling. He is portrayed as a 240-year-old “tanned, white-haired, omnipotent Zeus” (Paragraph 55) in the mural and is cheerful and amiable, described as booming with “importance, accomplishments, and the joy of living” (Paragraph 62). He represents the utopic vision of the society that he helped create.
He is defensive of the system that he helped create and currently supports. In order to convince Wehling of the necessity of the “life for a life” system that Wehling is trapped by, Dr. Hitz explains that prior to the year 2000, when the population cap law came into effect, there were not enough resources: there was nothing to eat but seaweed, there wasn’t enough drinking water, there was not enough space, and people continued to reproduce while demanding to live forever. As someone who lived during that time, Hitz makes the case that the world would have ended if not for the passing of the law. He says, “Two centuries ago, when I was a young man, it was a hell that nobody thought could last another twenty years. Now centuries of peace and plenty stretch before us as far as the imagination cares to travel” (Paragraph 101). The cost of peace and prosperity is the choice that Wehling and others like him have to make.
Dr. Hitz sees himself as a rational humanitarian who is protecting future generations. Though Hitz presents a reasonable point of view, Vonnegut also creates a parallel between Dr. Hitz and the Nazi regime, in both his personality and his proud connection with the creation of gas chambers. Nazi propaganda might characterize a doctor working toward a utopian future as tall, powerful, and vivacious in order to persuade an audience of the rationality they preach.
Leora Duncan
Leora Duncan is a gas chamber hostess. Her job is to make people feel comfortable when they are choosing to kill themselves at the municipal gas chambers. Hostesses wear all purple. Duncan is described as formidable, wearing purple shoes, stockings, trench coat, and cap, and carrying a purple bag with the seal of the Service Division of the Federal Bureau of Termination.
Leora Duncan also has facial hair and a clear mustache. Vonnegut writes that no matter how feminine hostesses start out, they begin to sprout mustaches within five years of working at the bureau. Here, Vonnegut utilizes a sexist trope for dark humor, connecting conventional feminine beauty to morality, in order to illustrate the moral degradation of working for the Federal Bureau of Termination and making that degradation apparent through the growth of masculine facial hair on an otherwise feminine and feminine-presenting body.
In between the lines of this satirical trope, there is a correlation between morality and is perceived as “good” and misogynistic viewpoints. Similarly, there is a connection between what is inherently antagonistic, the Bureau, and perceived unattractiveness. This trope villainizes gender fluidity and does not view women as independent of the male gaze. This story was first published in 1962, before the Stonewall riots and before many well-known LGBTQ+ historical milestones occurred. Vonnegut’s depictions of Leora idealize heteronormativity and traditional representations of masculinity and femininity.
Duncan arrives in the waiting room because she is there to be painted into the mural by the painter. She believes that the painting looks like heaven and is excited to be included in it. She is especially pleased when she gets to be painted next to Dr. Hitz, whom she bashfully admires. She is otherwise presented as innocent and somewhat plain.
Duncan represents the type of people who are swept up in a cause, allowing an institution to persist, even if the institution is in the business of euthanasia. At the same time, she also symbolizes the implicit problems of the world that the characters inhabit.
Related Titles
By Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
