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Doctor Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne
Doctor Ed Harris is a young engineer who works at the Ithaca Works. Harrison meets Paul during dinner on the first night of the Meadows, when everyone is required to talk to somebody they don’t already know. At first, Harrison seems just like all the other young engineers: eager and full of company spirit. When Kroner and Gelhorne fire Paul at the Meadows and spread the rumor that he’s a “saboteur,” everyone turns on him—except for Harrison, who brings him a drink and asks what he did to receive this treatment. In response, Paul advises him to either fully commit to the corporate life or get out now. It’s too hard, he says, to have misgivings about the job while continuing to do it day in and day out. Harrison takes this advice, leaving behind his life of engineering and planning to move to someplace where there are no machines.
Doctor Edmund L. Harrison (Ed Harrison) Quotes in Player Piano
The Player Piano quotes below are all either spoken by Doctor Edmund L. Harrison (Ed Harrison) or refer to Doctor Edmund L. Harrison (Ed Harrison). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 23 Quotes
“What am I going to do? Farm, maybe. I’ve got a nice little farm.”
“Farm, eh?” Harrison clucked his tongue reflectively. “Farm. Sounds wonderful. I’ve thought of that: up in the morning with the sun; working out there with your hands in the earth, just you and nature. If I had the money, sometimes I think maybe I’d throw this—”
“You want a piece of advice from a tired old man?”
“Depends on which tired old man. You?”
“Me. Don’t put one foot in your job and the other in your dreams, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It’s just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you’ve made up your mind which way to go.”
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Chapter 28 Quotes
“What have you got against machines?” said Buck.
“They’re slaves.”
“Well, what the heck,” said Buck. “I mean, they aren’t people. They don’t suffer. They don’t mind working.”
“No. But they compete with people.”
“That’s a pretty good thing, isn’t it—considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?”
“Anything that competes with slaves becomes a slave,” said Harrison thickly, and he left.
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Doctor Edmund L. Harrison (Ed Harrison) Character Timeline in Player Piano
The timeline below shows where the character Doctor Edmund L. Harrison (Ed Harrison) appears in Player Piano. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 19
Paul sits down next to a young engineer named Doctor Ed Harrison, who recognizes Paul’s last name and asks him about his father. As Paul and Harrison...
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Chapter 23
Paul wakes up on a dock. Ed Harrison is there with a glass of whiskey for him, figuring he’d probably want something to...
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Although Kroner sent him, Harrison seems genuinely concerned for Paul’s well-being, asking what, exactly, he did to find himself in...
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Chapter 28
...engineer stumbles over and says he has heard the entire conversation. His name is Ed Harrison, and he wants Buck to know the perils of working as an engineer: an injury...
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Harrison tells Buck that what managers and engineers are doing isn’t good for the rest of...
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After Harrison leaves, Roseberry and Buck make their way out of the bar to speak privately. On...
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