Societies of control and the distinction between utopia and dystopia is a running theme throughout many of Vonnegut’s works, including in his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five, in which Billy Pilgrim struggles with the morality of his own actions and the actions of the governments around him.

Dystopian fiction arose initially around the French Revolution. However, modern dystopian fiction did not become popular until the beginning of the 20th century, when the world, and especially the west (North America and Europe) faced existential crises in the form of world wars, fast paced changes in life due to mass modernization of technology, and the fragmentation of familiar institutions (church, state, family, colonies, and so on). Unlike utopian fiction, which imagines an ideal place, dystopian fiction imagines a negative place that is most often authoritarian. Popular examples of dystopian fiction include Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984.

The world of “2 B R 0 2 B” is not a clear dystopia or utopia. Unlike most other dystopian worlds, free will is not fully taken away from the citizens. They have the right to choose whether they want to die and whether they want to have children.