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Chapter 34
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
The sun rises over Ilium, which is littered with broken machinery. Halyard wakes up on the floor of the limousine to find Finnerty driving the four leaders of the Ghost Shirt Society around town to survey the destruction. Paul and the others have decided that they will use the next six months of isolation from the rest of the United States to prove that it truly is possible to live without machines. With this in mind, they’ve come to appreciate that their revolutionaries smashed every machine in sight.
Even though the Ghost Shirt revolution has failed, it has provided Paul and the others with the opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of the nation that living without machines isn’t such a crazy idea. Because there’s such an overreliance on machines, it makes sense that people wouldn’t immediately accept the idea of shifting away from automation. But if people knew that leaving behind technology wouldn’t completely ruin the country, then they might actually go along with the idea. This is what Paul, Finnerty, Lasher, and von Neumann want to prove.
Themes
Paul and the others soon come across a huge crowd standing around a broken soda machine. At the center of the crowd stands Bud Calhoun. He’s busy at work finding innovative ways to fix the machine, and though everyone hates this brand of soda, they eagerly line up for a drink when Bud finally gets the machine working again.
In this scene, Bud perfectly exemplifies Finnerty’s point about how humans can’t help but find ways to improve things. Bud was instrumental not just in the plot to destroy EPICAC—the largest computing machine in the country—but also in the effort to ruin smaller machines in the town of Ilium. And yet, here he is rebuilding a soda machine. What’s more, the very same people who excitedly smashed every machine in sight are now taking great joy in watching Bud fix the soda machine. This just shows that tinkering with technology (even something as basic as a soda dispenser) is simply too enticing to give up. Humans, it seems, are naturally inclined to build and fix things, regardless of whether or not those things are beneficial to society.
Themes
After fixing the soda machine, Bud moves to yet another broken machine and brainstorms ways to fix it. Enthralled, the crowd watches and runs to fetch him spare parts. As the very same people who destroyed the machines work to rebuild them, Lasher tells Paul, Finnerty, and Professor von Neumann to get back into the limousine, informing them that he’s going to turn himself over to the government. When he asks if any of the others want to save themselves, they all decide to turn themselves in, too.
Watching Bud and the crowd around him take so much pleasure in rebuilding the broken machines causes Lasher to change his mind. Although he wanted to prove to the rest of the country that it’s possible to live a machine-free life, he now sees that this is a futile endeavor. After all, Bud and his onlookers have proved that people really do want machines in their lives, even if they know that certain kinds of technological progress can be harmful to society.
Themes
On their way to the roadblock—where the authorities are waiting for them—Paul and the others pass Khashdrahr and the Shah sleeping peacefully in a trench. Paying them no mind, Lasher takes out a bottle and proposes a toast—but this toast isn’t in honor of the success of their revolution. Rather, it honors the mere fact that they did something. They challenged an immoral system, and everyone—Paul, Finnerty, von Neumann, and Lasher himself—is perfectly content with that. Gulping down the liquor, Paul smashes the bottle on a rock and joins his fellow revolutionaries as they walk toward the police.
Player Piano doesn’t end on a triumphant, optimistic note. Nothing major about this futuristic, fairly dystopian society has changed. Machines still run the country, and the class division created by automation is still firmly in place. What’s more, even most of the Ghost Shirt revolutionaries have negated the purpose of their own cause by proving that humans can’t help themselves from seeking out technological progress. The only thing that has changed, then, is that Paul and the other Ghost Shirt leaders challenged the status quo. And though this clearly isn’t enough to bring about comprehensive change, it at least shows the elite class of managers and engineers that they shouldn’t take their power for granted. On a broader level, the novel’s somewhat pessimistic ending implies that progress—and especially technological progress—is simply a fact of modern life, regardless of whether or not it benefits society.
Themes
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