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Chapter 25
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
Paul takes a lonely train ride home. A fellow passenger rants about how he used to be a train conductor before machines started doing the job. When the train reaches Ilium, Paul steps off in a daze and walks through Homestead. On his way through the streets, he hears a voice calling to him from above. Looking up, he sees a woman in a window. “Lonesome?” she says, inviting him up for some company. He goes upstairs and sleeps with her, dreaming at one point that his father is standing at the foot of the bed and glaring at him.
Now that he’s no longer part of the company (for the time being, at least), Paul is utterly alone. Nobody from his work life wants to associate with him because he’s seen as a “saboteur,” and even Anita has left him. The only person who will spend time with him, it seems, is this stranger in the window, who is possibly a sex worker and thus only sleeps with him to earn money. He has, in other words, been completely ostracized from everyone and everything he knew in life, all because people think he betrayed the central values of the corporate world.
Themes
