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Chapter 2
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
Although Paul has the highest salary in Ilium, he likes to drive a beat-up old Plymouth. He keeps a rusty old pistol in its glove compartment—not because he needs it, but because he hasn’t returned it like he was supposed to. It first came to him during the riots that occurred right after the war, when the government issued weapons to law-abiding citizens like him. It’s illegal to have the gun lying around like this, but he hasn’t gotten around to giving it back or putting it somewhere safe. Now, with the pistol in the glove compartment, he drives the old Plymouth over the bridge so he can buy a bottle of Irish whiskey in Homestead. The whiskey is for Finnerty, who is one of the only people with whom Paul has ever felt kinship.
Driving a beat-up old car is yet another sign that Paul isn’t fully invested in the lifestyle that comes along with corporate success. As the highest-paid person in Ilium, he could surely afford a fancy car, but he chooses not to buy one. This suggests that acting like a powerful authority figure doesn’t appeal to him. Instead, he’s more down to earth, unimpressed by flashy displays of money and status. In other words, he doesn’t care all that much about the elite class, which is perhaps why he doesn’t bother to register his gun—he’s not concerned with doing what he’s supposed to. This implies that Paul has a subversive side to him.
Themes
Whenever he goes to Homestead, Paul tries to blend in by wearing a leather jacket. As he enters a bar and asks for a bottle of whiskey, though, he feels like everyone is watching him. He feels awkward because the bartender is one of those few people in Homestead who—because he was never replaced by a machine—thinks he’s superior to everyone else and is therefore eager to treat Paul better than the other patrons. Although people like the bartender feel superior because they weren’t ousted by machines, nobody on Paul’s side of the river thinks of it this way. It’s not that these people were too smart to be replaced, it’s just that there’s no economic incentive to build machines for their jobs.
The division in Ilium is so pervasive that it creates tension between people who are technically in the same class. Nobody on Paul’s side of the river actually respects people like the bartender, but because the bartender is one of the few people who hasn’t been replaced by machines, he still acts like he’s better than the people around him. This shows just how eager people are in this society to feel important—status, it seems, matters more than anything else. Meanwhile, Paul wants to play down his elevated status, trying to distance himself from his own corporate success in order to fit in with the people of Homestead. Yet again, this suggests that Paul is unfulfilled by his station in life and uninterested in the power he has as a successful manager.
Themes
When the bartender disappears to get the whiskey, Paul feels everyone staring at him. To occupy himself, he pets a blind dog sitting with one of the customers, but it barks at him and looks at its owner, who assures him that the dog is harmless. The dog’s owner then realizes that he recognizes Paul; “Don’t you recognize my face, Doctor?” he asks. Embarrassed, Paul fails to remember, until the old man offers that Paul once said he had the most skilled hands in Ilium: the old man, Paul realizes, is Rudy Hertz.
By running into Rudy Hertz, Paul comes face to face with someone who has been replaced by machines. The interesting thing about Rudy, though, is that he has been replaced by machines designed to emulate his own work! This puts him in a unique position, since he has been robbed of a job but not necessarily of his dignity—after all, his work helped revolutionize the industry to which he devoted his life, so he can at least feel good about that.
Themes
It quickly becomes clear that having his craftsmanship recorded by Paul, Finnerty, and Shepherd was the highlight of Rudy’s life. Knowing that someone as intelligent as Paul would call him a “damn fine machinist” is, Rudy says, pretty much all he has in life, especially since everyone knows Paul is the smartest man in town. This makes Paul uncomfortable. He knows Rudy thinks he’s honoring him in front of everyone else, but it’s very clear that nobody—except Rudy—has any respect for him in this bar.
It’s almost as if Rudy respects Paul because Paul respects him: by honoring his work as a machinist, Paul helped Rudy feel useful and relevant, even though he also put Rudy out of a job. This suggests that a lot of the tension between the working class and the elite has to do with self-worth and dignity (or the lack of these things). Rudy has every reason to dislike Paul, since Paul played such a big role in taking away his job. And yet, he goes out of his way to celebrate Paul. This indicates that people are less likely to resent the elite if they feel valued and appreciated. In this moment, though, only Rudy feels valued by Paul, which is why everyone else in the bar clearly dislikes Paul.
Themes
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Paul falls into conversation with a man in thick glasses sitting next to Rudy. This man’s 18-year-old son recently failed the National General Classification Tests, meaning that he can’t go to college. And because he can’t afford to go to private school, the boy either has to join the army or go into the “Reeks and Wrecks” (a nickname for the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps).
Hearing about the troubles of this stranger’s son, Paul must face the tragic lack of options available to people who don’t go to college. Normally, people can go into many different fields without a college degree—in this futuristic version of the United States, though, there are very few paths for someone like this young man. This highlights the division between the working class and the elite, especially since Paul has had so much success but doesn’t even seem all that invested in his career. As long as people have the right qualifications, it seems, they don’t even have to try that hard in order to succeed. If they don’t have the right qualifications, though, they have very few opportunities for advancement.
Themes
Paul tries to praise the benefits of joining the army or the Reeks and Wrecks, but he’s unable to say anything that sounds genuine. He then awkwardly says that he doesn’t have the power to help this man’s son, though he adds that he could speak to the person in charge of “testing and placement.” The man then asks if there’s anything his son could do at the Ilium Works, since he’s very good with machines, but Paul insists that the boy would need a graduate degree. With this in mind, Paul suggests that the man’s son open a repair shop instead. The man scoffs at this. Everyone on this side of the river has thought about doing that, and it never works.
In order to work at Ilium Works, this stranger’s son wouldn’t just need a college degree (which he doesn’t have), but also a graduate degree. This emphasizes just how impossible it is for people who don’t qualify for college to gain any sort of upward mobility. Working somewhere like Ilium Works is completely out of reach for this young man, despite the fact that he’s naturally talented at working on machines. He would most likely be a good worker, but he’ll never get the chance to prove himself—an illustration of how limited people are by this rigid system.
Themes
Thankfully, Rudy puts some money in the player piano near the bar, which cuts off all conversation. Since the bartender has finally returned with Paul’s whiskey, he turns to go, but Rudy stops him—he paid for this song in Paul’s honor. Paul waits uncomfortably for it to finish, watching the keys on the player piano move up and down. Rudy comments on how weird it is to see a piano playing itself, almost as if a ghost is playing the tune. When the song ends, Paul bolts out of the bar.
Since the player piano recreates a human’s movement, it is the perfect representation of how Rudy got replaced by a machine. After all, Paul recorded Rudy’s physical movements so that a machine could emulate his work. Similarly, the player piano has been built to play a song in the same exact way that a musician originally played it. This means that, although the machine can play all by itself, it preserves the memory of whoever played the song, just like the machines that replaced Rudy preserve the memory (or “ghost”) of his craftsmanship. This is a good reminder that machines aren’t intelligent beings; rather, they function because of human work and creativity, even if they’ve also rendered humans largely unnecessary in the workforce.
Themes
