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Chapter 33
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
It’s four in the morning, and Paul sits in his old office with Lasher, Finnerty, and von Neumann. The Society has successfully overtaken Ilium, but they failed to do much more than that. Pittsburgh held its own against the revolutionaries, as did most of the other major cities in the country. Worse, the Ghost Shirts failed to blow up EPICAC. Far-off explosions are audible through the walls of the Ilium Works, as rogue Ghost Shirts go crazy destroying whatever they want, taking out virtually every single machine they come across.
As a whole, the Ghost Shirt revolution has failed, but this doesn’t stop its members from taking any opportunity to decimate the machines in Ilium. No matter how many machines they break, though, it’s clear that automation is here to stay, since EPICAC—the central computing machine that determines virtually everything about how the country functions—is still intact. At this point, then, the revolution has become little more than an outlet for people to vent their anger at the injustice that automation has brought upon society.
Themes
A helicopter flies overhead, announcing through a loudspeaker that the Ghost Shirts have six hours to turn in the leaders of the movement. After this, the police will cut Ilium off from the rest of the country for six months. This announcement plays until Luke Lubbock shoots down the helicopter, at which point Paul and Finnerty take a walk around Ilium Works, surveying the damage and talking about how they were the ones who helped build so many of the machines they ended up renouncing. This, Finnerty points out, is simply human nature—it’s enticing and exciting to work toward change. Stasis is boring, so people are always going to work toward improvement.
Although Player Piano sheds light on the many downsides of automation, the novel also suggests—in this moment, at least—that it’s natural for people to invent things. The problem, after all, isn’t with the creative impulse to make new machines. Rather, problems arise when society loses sight of the fact that machines are supposed to benefit people, not make their lives harder. In the world of the novel, machines have only benefitted people in positions of power. Meanwhile, they’ve made it extremely difficult for everyone else to lead happy lives. Still, Finnerty and Paul recognize that trying to come up with new ideas to improve life is simply part of what it means to be human. Unfortunately, though, sometimes technological advancement ends up doing more harm than good.
Themes
When Paul and Finnerty return to Paul’s old office, they wake up Lasher and ask what ever happened to the Native Americas who inspired the Ghost Shirt Society. He answers that many were killed, and the others surrendered; this is why he always knew the Ghost Shirt revolution would fail. What matters is that he and the others tried to upend an unjust, corrupt system. This baffles Paul, who can’t believe Lasher would so willingly undertake something he thought was doomed, but Lasher reminds him that he is, above all, a reverend, so simply trying to fight immorality is enough for him—even when the entire effort is sure to fail.
For Lasher, staging a revolution against the United States is a moral undertaking, not something he actually expects to be successful. He never thought it would be possible to dismantle the country’s overreliance on machines, but this didn’t stop him from trying. This suggests that he sees technological progress as essentially unstoppable. And yet, the Ghost Shirt Society did prove that large numbers of people are unhappy with the way society functions. This, it seems, is how people like Lasher can bring about change—not by completely destroying the existing structures of power, but by clearly demonstrating that those structures aren’t actually working for many American citizens (despite what people like Kroner might believe about automation improving the quality of life for the typical American).
Themes
