Previous
Chapter 6
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 Shah of Bratpuhr goes with Halyard and Khashdrahr to visit the US Army. The Army company marches before him, saluting him as the Division Commander barks out commands. While this is happening, one of the soldiers, Private First Class Elmo C. Hacketts, Jr., thinks about the day—many years away—when he’ll finally be released from the Army, at which point he’ll cuss out his superiors and they won’t be able to do anything about it. Meanwhile, the Shah remarks (through Khashdrahr) that the soldiers are a “fine bunch of slaves,” and Halyard once again tries to correct him.
The novel uses the Shah and Khashdrahr’s unfamiliarity with the United States as a way of viewing the country’s various power structures from an outside perspective. In this case, the Shah once again sees American citizens as enslaved people, and though this isn’t technically true, it is the case that people like Private First Class Elmo C. Hacketts, Jr., are serving in the military not because they want to, but because they have very few alternatives. In a way, then, the soldiers the Shah visits in this scene actually do have something in common with enslaved people: the inability to live their lives the way they actually want.
Themes
