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Doctor Ewing J. Halyard
Doctor Katharine Finch is Paul’s secretary at the Ilium Works, where she’s the only female employee. Paul sees her as more of a “symbol of rank than a real help”; in other words, he thinks that just having a secretary makes him seem important, even if he also believes that a machine could do her job more efficiently. Still, she often covers for Paul when he decides to leave work early—something a machine clearly couldn’t do. Katharine is in a relationship with the gifted manager Bud Calhoun, who’s always hanging around in her office, which is attached to Paul’s. When Bud is replaced by a machine that he himself invented, Katharine is distraught and eventually shows her contempt for the system by joining the Ghost Shirt Society (along with Bud) and helping them plan a revolution against the machines.
Doctor Katharine Finch Quotes in Player Piano
The Player Piano quotes below are all either spoken by Doctor Katharine Finch or refer to Doctor Katharine Finch. 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:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
“It seemed very fresh to me—I mean that part where you say how the First Industrial Revolution devalued muscle work, then the second one devalued routine mental work. I was fascinated.”
[…]
“Actually, it is kind of incredible that things were ever any other way, isn’t it? It was so ridiculous to have people stuck in one place all day, just using their senses, then a reflex, using their senses, then a reflex, and not really thinking at all.”
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“[…] Hangovers, family squabbles, resentments against the boss, debts, the war—every kind of human trouble was likely to show up in a product one way or another.” He smiled. “And happiness, too. I can remember when we had to allow for holidays, especially around Christmas. There wasn’t anything to do but take it. The reject rate would start climbing around the fifth of December, and up and up it’d go until Christmas. Then the holiday, then a horrible reject rate; then New Year’s, then a ghastly reject level. Then things would taper down to normal—which was plenty bad enough—by January fifteenth or so. We used to have to figure in things like that in pricing a product.”
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Doctor Katharine Finch Quotes in Player Piano
The Player Piano quotes below are all either spoken by Doctor Katharine Finch or refer to Doctor Katharine Finch. 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:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
“It seemed very fresh to me—I mean that part where you say how the First Industrial Revolution devalued muscle work, then the second one devalued routine mental work. I was fascinated.”
[…]
“Actually, it is kind of incredible that things were ever any other way, isn’t it? It was so ridiculous to have people stuck in one place all day, just using their senses, then a reflex, using their senses, then a reflex, and not really thinking at all.”
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“[…] Hangovers, family squabbles, resentments against the boss, debts, the war—every kind of human trouble was likely to show up in a product one way or another.” He smiled. “And happiness, too. I can remember when we had to allow for holidays, especially around Christmas. There wasn’t anything to do but take it. The reject rate would start climbing around the fifth of December, and up and up it’d go until Christmas. Then the holiday, then a horrible reject rate; then New Year’s, then a ghastly reject level. Then things would taper down to normal—which was plenty bad enough—by January fifteenth or so. We used to have to figure in things like that in pricing a product.”
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Page Number and Citation:
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