2 B R 0 2 B

Kurt Vonnegut imagines a future with no poverty, no war and no old age, where death, barring accidents, comes only to volunteers. The catch is that a baby may live only if someone agrees to die to make room for it. Edward Wehling has just become the father of triplets, and he has found only one volunteer. The title, often written 2BR02B, is the telephone number people call to die, and it spells out a famous question. In a hospital waiting room where a bitter old painter is finishing a cheerful mural, the story builds to a sudden and shocking ending.

What happens in 2 B R 0 2 B

In a future United States, disease and aging have been conquered, war and poverty are gone, and the population is held at forty million. Since almost no one dies except by accident or choice, the law says a newborn may live only if someone volunteers to die in its place. One morning in the waiting room of the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, Edward K. Wehling, Jr., fifty-six and young by the standards of his time, waits while his wife gives birth to triplets. The room is being redecorated as a memorial to a man who volunteered to die. A painter about two hundred years old sits on a stepladder working on a mural called The Happy Garden of Life, in which doctors and nurses in white tend young plants while figures in purple uniforms pull weeds and cut down old growth. A hospital orderly admires the mural, and the sour painter says a dirty dropcloth would be a more honest picture of life. The orderly teases him with the telephone number people call when they want to die, 2 B R 0 2 B, the number of the municipal gas chambers run by the Federal Bureau of Termination. Leora Duncan, a hostess from the Bureau’s Service Division dressed all in purple, arrives to have her face painted into the mural. She agrees to pose as a figure sawing a dead branch, which puts her beside the portrait of Dr. Benjamin Hitz, the hospital’s Chief Obstetrician, who set up Chicago’s first gas chamber. Hitz himself bursts in and announces that triplets have been born. He says the parents had found only one volunteer, and Leora doubts they found more. Wehling speaks up: he must choose which baby will live and take his maternal grandfather to the gas chamber. Hitz lectures him about the starving, crowded world before population control and promises his child a life in a garden like the mural. Wehling draws a revolver. He shoots Hitz dead, then Leora Duncan, then himself, making room for all three of his children. Nobody seems to hear the shots. The painter, looking down from his ladder, can think only of grim answers to life on a small planet. He drops his brush, picks up Wehling’s pistol, and finds he lacks the nerve to shoot himself. Instead he dials 2 B R 0 2 B and books an appointment for that afternoon.

Where and when 2 B R 0 2 B happens

Timeline the story arc, beat by beat

1. The waiting room
   A father waits

   In a Chicago hospital, Edward K. Wehling, Jr. waits for his wife to give birth to triplets while an old painter works on a mural.

2. The number
   2 B R 0 2 B

   A hospital orderly teases the gloomy painter with the telephone number of the Federal Bureau of Termination’s gas chambers.

3. The portrait
   Leora Duncan poses

   Leora Duncan, a purple-clad hostess from the Bureau, agrees to pose as a figure sawing a dead branch beside Dr. Hitz’s portrait.

4. The news
   Triplets are born

   Dr. Hitz bursts in to announce the triplets, and the talk turns to the three volunteers the law requires.

5. The choice
   Only one volunteer

   Wehling reveals that his grandfather is the only volunteer, so he must pick one baby, and Dr. Hitz lectures him on population control.

6. The shooting
   Room for three

   Wehling shoots Dr. Hitz, then Leora Duncan, then himself, making room for all three of his children.

7. The end
   The painter’s call

   Unable to shoot himself, the painter dials 2 B R 0 2 B and books an appointment to die.

Characters and how they connect

Character Relationships who connects to whom, and the themes that bind them

Themes in 2 B R 0 2 B what the story is really about

Symbols & motifs

Conflicts

Literary devices

Satire

Vonnegut mocks a society that treats mass killing as a public service and honors its killers with portraits in a mural.

Allusion

The title and phone number point to the most famous line in Hamlet, a speech about whether life is worth enduring.

Irony

The story opens by calling everything perfectly swell, and Dr. Hitz jokes that the waiting room is where people come in, not where they leave, shortly before he dies there.

Euphemism

Killers are hostesses, the dead are volunteers, and the gas chambers are Ethical Suicide Studios, so the language hides what the system does.

Wordplay

The painter jokes that Leora Duncan dunks people, and the zero in the phone number is spoken as naught so the number reads as Hamlet’s question.

Important quotes

The ending of 2 B R 0 2 B, explained

The ending of 2 B R 0 2 B comes in two sharp turns. First, Wehling answers Dr. Hitz’s cheerful promise of a roomy, happy future by drawing a revolver. He shoots Hitz, the man who set up Chicago’s first gas chamber, then Leora Duncan, whose job is killing people gently, and then himself. By the story’s own grim arithmetic, three deaths make room for all three triplets. The story never says whether his grandfather is spared. Nobody comes running, and no one seems to hear, as if the orderly world simply absorbs the violence. Second, the painter, who has sneered at the mural all morning, looks down at the bodies and thinks about the problem beneath the story: people want to be born, to have children and to live as long as they can, on a small planet that has to last forever. Every other answer he can imagine, war, plague and starvation, seems even worse than the gas chambers. He drops his brush, knowing he will never paint again, picks up Wehling’s pistol, and cannot bring himself to use it. Instead he calls the number and books his own death, and the hostess thanks him in the name of his city, his country, his planet and future generations. Readers disagree about what Vonnegut wants us to feel. Some see Wehling as a desperate hero whose love for his children breaks through a smiling machine of death. Others note that he kills two people and, in doing so, obeys the system’s own rule of one death for one life. The painter’s call can be read as defeat, the last skeptic choosing the state’s tidy method, or as bleak honesty from a man who admits he has no better answer. Many readers take the story as a satire of any society that hides killing behind polite words, while others point out that it treats a crowded planet as a real problem it cannot solve.

Common misreadings

Test yourself

Kurt Vonnegut imagines a future where nobody gets old or sick, and the country always has the same number of people. So whenever a baby is born, someone has to agree to die to make room. Edward Wehling’s wife has triplets, but only one person, his grandfather, has agreed to die for them. That means he has to choose which one baby gets to live. Wehling is so upset that he shoots the doctor, a woman who works for the government office that ends people’s lives, and then himself, which makes room for all three babies. An old painter who sees it all feels hopeless and calls the special phone number to sign up to die too.

Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know

Compare & connect the story universe

Discussion & essay prompts for class, or your next paper

Key questions students ask

• What does the title 2 B R 0 2 B mean
• What happens at the end of 2 B R 0 2 B
• Why does Wehling shoot Dr. Hitz in 2 B R 0 2 B
• What does the mural symbolize in 2 B R 0 2 B
• What is the Federal Bureau of Termination in 2 B R 0 2 B
• How is 2 B R 0 2 B similar to Harrison Bergeron