2BRO2B

First published in 1962, “2BR02B” imagines a dystopian future in which scientists have found the cure to aging. This miracle cure brings destruction, poverty, and famine to an over-populated world until Dr. Hitz sets up government-run gas chambers to curb the population. The law stipulates that for every child born, one person must volunteer to die. The story opens in a hospital when Mr. Wehling’s wife gives birth to triplets. Vonnegut borrowed the title of the story from the famous “to be or not to be” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The title refers to the phone number that characters can call to set up their appointment with the gas chambers. Like many other Vonnegut stories, the government can be seen as the chief antagonist. However, he complicates this theme with the subject matter of this story: “2BR02B” asks readers to question humankind’s right to reproduce in an over-populated world; and the virtue humankind has in dying.