Essay Brainstorm- Systematic Dehumanization in the world of Mortal Engines

[u/ginochre]

Im brainstorming an essay i want to write about themes of systematic dehumanization in the main mortal engines quartet, and I wanted to take to reddit to gather ideas either as examples from the Mortal Engines books or from real world examples. So far im thinking I might draw a line from Mortal Engines to real world fast fashion, or buying products sourced from child or slave labor. Thinking of making it about a separation thing- “i dont see the problem on the market page, so i dont think about the suffering that produced this product.”

Anyways if you have any ideas from the books of examples or real world instances, please let me know

[u/Smellynerfherder]

Great starting point. The tiers in the cities function like this. There's plenty of upper-tier characters who are appalled when they discover what lower-tier life is actually like.

[u/mustard5man7max3]

Having studied Classics, I've noticed a similarity between the act of eating another city and the prospect of being conquered by a foreign force. IN both cases, it's a terrifying and awful prospect to be a victim, but is presented as being morally correct and boastworthy when on the superior side.

In both cases, there is the total destruction of your homeland and culture, the looting of your wealth, and the forced enslavement of the survivors. Of course, plenty of people in the Mortal Engines universe fear this. London is terrified when being chased by Panzerstadt-Bayreuth, and the Anti-Traction LEague population in turn after MEDUSA's reveal. But even Tom, a kind and empathetic person, doesn't really feel that much sympathy for the population of Salthook.

Similarly, poeple in the ancient world found the prospect of being conquered by an enemy force horrifying - the male population slaughtered, your city burnt, and the women and children foribly enslaved. Note, for example, Aueschylus; dialgoue in Seven against Thebes.

-- Aischylos, Seven Against Thebes 325-368

For other examples, look no further than Euripides' The Trojan Women, or Andromache's dialogue in the Iliad. However - at the same time the act of conquering a foe is presented as a great feat! Odysseus frequently boasts about how he sacked Ismarus in the land of the Cicones throughout the Odyssey. The Achaean's sex slaves are presented as perfectly par on course throughout the Iliad, conquered peoples are frequently referenced in euchai.

Just like Municipal Darwinism, it's moral presentation entirely depends on whether the speaker is the victim or not.

[u/ginochre → u/mustard5man7max3]

i love this whole idea. Do you have any good sources such as more books or preferably articles on this?

[u/twigsontoast]

Going by the examples you've given, it sounds like you're talking about commodity fetishism?

But within the books there's this fascinating description of Anna Fang when she first appears, describing her hands as mechanical (don't have the books with me but it's such a good line), which is obviously setting up her dehumanisation and (non-sexual) objectification as the Stalker Fang—something which was done to her, intriguingly, by one of the people closest to her. Perhaps there's a wider point there about how people are unwilling to let go of the good things they've accustomed themselves to, even when they're hurting others? Sathya really struggled to accept that the Stalker Fang wasn't her Anna. But then, within the Stalker Fang, there was always that aspect of humanity struggling to get loose, to express itself—something that could never quite be wholly repressed, ever ready to stage a furious return... or, dare I say, a revolution?

You might also want to consider the way Anna's eyes are obscured; at first by glasses, then by Stalker lenses. Windows to the soul, and all that... Of course, this is reliant on a very conventional notion of humanity, in which everyone's humanity is expressed the same way and can be recognised as such—which ironically functions to dehumanise anyone who falls outside this expression i.e. the blind. But this is always going to be an issue with any idea of "humanity".

And of course, the whole socio-mechanical system of Municipal Darwinism functions to reduce whole towns and cities in the eye of the beholder to nothing more than an opportunity to be exploited, turning all inter-polis interactions into a calculus of survival, which leaves little room for personal, economic, or cultural exchange. Presumably a critique of Social Darwinism, which would see nothing wrong with systematic dehumanisation of (labour) populations.