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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Player Piano, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Technology and Progress
Happiness, Self-Worth, and Passion
Class Division and Competition
Corporate Life vs. Human Connection
Summary
Analysis
There are three sections of Ilium, New York: the area where managers and engineers live, the area where all the machines are kept, and—finally—a place called Homestead, where everyone else lives. The Iroquois River separates Homestead from the other parts of Ilium, and people rarely cross the bridge from one part of town to the next.
The opening description of Ilium, New York, establishes the intense class division at play in the community. The managers and engineers are separated from the rest of society, suggesting that these jobs come with a certain amount of prestige. The fact that people on either side of the Iroquois River rarely interact further illustrates this sense of separation in Ilium. Furthermore, the town’s third section, which is made up entirely of machines, indicates that this society is quite advanced. And yet, there’s still some obvious class division, implying that technologically advanced societies aren’t necessarily very socially advanced.
Themes
Ten years have passed since a devastating war. During this war, managers and engineers were able to keep the economy afloat by inventing and building machines to replace the many laborers who went off to the battlefield. This mechanization was a great success, allowing businesses to operate almost entirely without actual workers—a business model that has persisted even after the war. These days, managers and engineers proudly like to say that “know-how won the war.”
This section reveals that Player Piano exists in a near future—one in which a war (perhaps World War III) has profoundly altered the way the United States functions. This helps explain how managers and engineers have become a prestigious class, since their knowledge about machines (their “know-how”) is what helped win the war. However, the strides these managers and engineers made during the war have long-lasting effects, considering that the mechanization they helped build has changed the entire workforce. This means that anyone who worked as a manual laborer before the war has been replaced—a sure-fire way to create tension between the working class and the upper class.
Themes
Doctor Paul Proteus, a 35-year-old engineer-turned-manager, sits in his office at the Ilium Works petting a cat. Everyone in Ilium thinks Paul is destined to be as successful as his father, Doctor George Proteus, who was the country’s first “National, Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director”—a position just as important as the president of the United States. Despite everyone’s high expectations, though, Paul doesn’t feel particularly intelligent or remarkable, and he hasn’t felt this way for quite a while.
Themes
Paul strokes the cat in his lap, which he found by the golf course near Ilium Works. He snatched her because mice have been eating important wires at the plant. Paul uses the intercom system to ask his secretary, Doctor Katharine Finch, when she’ll be finished typing his speech, which he’s supposed to deliver at the Country Club that night. The mere fact that Paul still has a secretary is outdated, since during the war most managers and engineers made do with machines as their helpers—an arrangement that was ultimately more efficient and cheaper than using human secretaries.
Themes
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Instead of focusing on Paul’s speech, Katharine is flirting with a manager named Bud Calhoun. Slightly annoyed by this (and thinking that a machine would be much more efficient), Paul looks out the large window in his office, staring at a stretch of land where years ago Native Americans defended themselves against violent settlers and colonizers. On these grounds now lie the huge buildings full of machinery that make up the Ilium Works. The factories are busy at work creating industrial parts like refrigerator mechanisms and motorcycles and televisions. And beyond Ilium, Paul can see Homestead, where the descendants of important early Americans still live.
Katharine tells Paul through the intercom that a machine is malfunctioning in Building 58. Normally, Doctor Shepherd would fix this, but since he’s out sick, Paul has to handle it himself. He passes Bud Calhoun on his way through Katharine’s office, telling Bud to draw up a design for a mechanism that will send out a signal to help his new cat find mice. He only gives Bud this assignment because it’s annoying that Bud is always hanging around, but the idea immediately animates Bud, who Paul realizes probably will have a good design by the time he’s back from Building 58.
On his way to Building 58, Paul passes a group of enthusiastic young engineers and resents their cockiness. He tells himself he wasn’t like that when he first came to work at Ilium 13 years ago with his friend Ed Finnerty and their colleague Lawson Shepherd. Paul doesn’t like the way these young engineers act so important, even if people in Ilium tend to view engineers, managers, and scientists as an elite class. This mentality began during the war, when people with “know-how” were highly valued for their ability to create the machines that helped win the conflict and keep the economy in place. Back then, managers and engineers didn’t really see themselves as elite, though that’s how society treated them. But now everyone who goes to college comes out feeling entitled and important.
Arriving at Building 58, Paul feels at peace among the humming machines. The building itself is the same building where Thomas Edison used to work—it’s a little run down and outdated, but Paul fought for it to be preserved because he likes its historical importance. He often wonders what Edison would think if he could see how far technology has come, finding this idea reassuring. After all, life is better than it ever has been, thanks to society’s great technological strides.
Themes
Sometimes, though, Paul wishes he had fought in the war. He thinks about all the action on the battlefield and wonders if experiencing carnage would have made him appreciate his life all the more. Maybe, he thinks, this would help him feel like his job was useful and worthy of respect. As it stands, though, he has recently been feeling deflated about the corporate world and its petty problems.
Themes
Paul takes a moment to enjoy the inner workings of Building 58, thinking about the many laborers who used to toil toward greatness in this very building. The machines in here are set to stop in three days, at which point Paul will receive new instructions from his superiors and then order Shepherd (his second in command) to reset the machines according to how many new refrigerator parts are needed—a number determined by a large “computing machine” called EPICAC.
Themes
Stroking the cat as he walks through Building 58, Paul wonders if Shepherd is really out sick. He’s probably having meetings with important people so that he can get transferred away from Paul. The two men have known each other since they first started working at Ilium Works with Finnerty, who was promoted to an important job in Washington. Meanwhile, Paul was given the most important job in Ilium, humiliating Shepherd and stoking his undying sense of competition. Whether or not Shepherd gets transferred is out of Paul’s control, but he hopes, for Shepherd’s sake, that it happens.
Themes
Paul opens the malfunctioning machine—called “lathe group three”—and inspects its inside. It has a loop of tape, where the precise motions of a master machinist have been documented so that the machine can imitate the man’s movements. This is old technology. Paul himself helped create it when he first arrived at Ilium Works 13 years earlier; he, Finnerty, and Shepherd went out to one of the “machine shop[s]” and identified the machinist with the most skill. The man’s name was Rudy Hertz, and he was honored to be chosen.
Themes
After Paul, Finnerty, and Shepherd recorded Rudy’s movements, they took him out for a beer. Although Rudy didn’t understand the technology, he was extremely excited to be recognized for his skill. Paul doesn’t know what became of Rudy—all he knows is that the machine based on the man’s craftsmanship can create as many industrial parts as Paul tells it to.
Themes
Paul closes the machine. Nothing is wrong with it; it just needs to be upgraded. It will produce some faulty parts, but the company will just have to live with that until it gets replaced. Paul thinks about how a machine like this should be in a museum, not a factory. There was once a time when the tapes in these machines were so valuable that they had to be locked up. Now, though, the country enforces “antisabotage laws” so intensely that it’s unlikely anyone would be able to get to the machines in the first place.
Themes
As Paul walks back through Building 58, an automatic cleaning machine comes down the aisle. The cat in Paul’s arms jumps to the floor and tries to stare down the machine, but it doesn’t change course. Instead, it runs over the cat, swallowing it whole. It then shoves the cat down a chute leading to a little cart outside. By the time Paul gets outside, the cat has escaped the cart and is climbing the large fence surrounding the building. Paul calls out to it, but it’s no use—the cat touches the armed wire at the top of the fence, sets off an alarm, gets electrocuted, and is sent hurdling through the air. The dead animal lands in a smoking heap on the ground.
Themes
Back at the office, Katharine gives Paul his typed speech and praises him for his wise words. She especially likes his comment that the First Industrial Revolution “devalued muscle work,” whereas the Second Industrial Revolution “devalued routine mental work.” Paul shrugs this off, saying that he didn’t come up with that idea; a famous mathematician said it in the 1940s. Still, Katharine is impressed, saying how astonishing it was that people used to spend their days doing the same repetitive motion until it was time to go home. Paul agrees, saying that manual labor was very expensive and extremely unreliable.
Still talking about the inefficiency of manual labor, Paul points out that personal problems always made their way into the production line. If employees had a hangover, trouble at home, a grudge against the boss, or any other stressor, these issues tended to appear in the products they made. Plus, maintaining workers’ happiness was a huge drain on company resources. And each year, employees would become increasingly distracted as the holiday season approached. The “reject rate” of the products always skyrocketed around this time, and there was nothing the company could do about it.
Katharine asks if Paul thinks there will be a Third Industrial Revolution. He doesn’t know, but guesses that if there were a third, it would probably include machines that entirely devalue human thought of any kind in the workplace. Paul, for one, hopes he won’t live to see this happen.
Themes
Before he goes into his office, Katharine hands Paul a design Bud made before leaving. He looks it over and realizes that, just as he expected, Bud has thought up a perfect machine for detecting mice. Impressed, he goes into his office and secretly drinks a shot of whiskey.
Themes
Paul’s wife, Anita, calls and reminds him that Kroner and Baer will be at the Country Club dinner that night. Kroner is the manager and Baer is the chief engineer of the Eastern Division, of which Ilium Works is just one part. It’s up to them to choose a person to fill an important position as the manager of the Pittsburgh Works—because of this, Paul doesn’t welcome the news that they’ll be at dinner. He is happy, however, when Anita tells him that his old friend Ed Finnerty has made a surprise visit from Washington and will be staying with them.
Themes
Anita—who can’t stand Finnerty—subtly tries to draw Paul’s focus back to impressing Kroner and Baer, and Paul assures her that he’ll be nice to them in an attempt to get the Pittsburgh job. This satisfies Anita, though she’s still worried because she heard through the grapevine that someone told Kroner that Paul doesn’t even want the job. Paul refutes this, insisting that he has been very clear with Kroner about wanting the promotion—still, though, Anita seems worried.
Themes
Anita tells Paul to come home early for a drink to relax his nerves before the dinner. He agrees, and on his way out of the office, he tells Katharine not to mind the warning light indicating that lathe group three is malfunctioning. It is, he tells her, “beyond help.”
Themes
