Hello! Instead of doing English homework I'm writing this post. Hey, it's free time anyways--classes were cancelled due to snow. Yay! So here we are. Um. This book is about a completely automated society. Pretty much everything nasty or difficult is done by machines. People exist to run and keep an eye on machines, but really, one person has a job as opposed to sometimes in the thousands of people that would have jobs that the machine displaces. Like that episode of the Twilight Zone! (There will probably be more on this later.) So for the most part, the person whose shoulder we are looking over is Doctor Paul Proteus. Proteus is the son of the man who ushered in this latest industrial revolution. Proteus isn't entirely comfortable with this automatic future, and kind of dreams of a simpler life, even though his pathway to success is already paved for him. Might I mention that there is an underground revolution against the automation brewing. And... Well, I guess that's all you really need now. Fun fact: This was Kurt Vonnegut's first book! In an interview with Playboy he admitted that he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of
Brave New World" (
Source). I guess there are two fun facts for the price of one...
First of all, you know how a lot of books have that "Any relations to any person, living or dead, are purely coincidental" shtick? Vonnegut puts his own spin on it: "This book is not a book about what is, but a book about what could be. The characters are modeled after persons as yet unborn, or, perhaps, at this writings, infants" (V).
Ah! I'm also obliged to mention that this is set in Ilium, New York. The city is split into the managers of the machines (people like Proteus), the machines, and where most of the people live--the average people. So okay, we can really go on now.
Proteus starts out as a frighteningly modernized man. He finds a stray cat and takes it in, knowing that a mouser is needed. Instead of letting it loose and just letting it follow its instincts, he asks an engineer of incredible skill (Bud Calhoun) to build a mouse alarm to tell the cat when and where mice were. Now that does scare and disgust me. Well, as Proteus is leaving the office, he reflects upon Bud's incredible talents and vaguely wonders if Bud wouldn't be happier in some other time period--but shakes that thought off as ridiculous, because this time of mechanization was clearly the best for him and vice versa. Of course, Bud
would be happier in an earlier time, when things were being invented out of necessity, but Proteus can't
think yet, so let us continue.
When Proteus gets into his car, Bud's car tells him to not take any wooden nickels over and over and over: "Don't take any wooden nickels, don't take any wooden nickels, don't take any--" (5). I know this was a problem at one point (remember that episode of Spongebob where Squidward gives Spongebob a quarter and Spongebob bites it? That's what people used to do to check if the nickel was a fraud or not), but still, it seems like a funny thing for a car to remind someone. The talking car also reminds me of a Ray Bradbury story--I believe it was originally published alone, but it can be found in the latter pages of
The Martian Chronicles. This is after the nuclear war on earth, so this fully automated house stands alone on the Martian landscape, cooking meals, letting the dog in and out, setting up drinks and card tables for games of poker, et cetera. Ah--and I probably should mention the name of the story, it is "There Will Come Soft Rains". Anyways, the house sings the times and reads poetry and such, and at the end of the story the house is set aflame thanks to an ignored cigar. As the house smolders into ashes the next morning it continues to cry, "Today is August 25th, 2026", over and over and over. Well--thanks to Wikipedia I found an incredibly depressing Soviet short loosely based on it. My God. Well, what the hell, I'll ruin your day too:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x38uy2_there-will-fall-soft-rains_shortfilms The end differs greatly, but the beginning is one of the scariest things I've ever seen. The very end is mighty depressing too.
Actually, while I'm thinking about it, let me point out the obvious symbolism. The machines tried to destroy nature--human nature, outdoors nature, whatever--in doing so destroyed religion, and it was what destroyed the people. But, it could not destroy the earth itself--(Michael Crichton, in
Jurassic Park, points out that when we say "save the earth", we mean "save ourselves", because the earth will continue on just fine without us) or all life. And I don't think it's just a coincidence that this one living creature is a dove.
Although Proteus is still modernized, he has been suffering periods of depression and doubt that maybe things aren't that great. "Objectively, Paul tried to tell himself, things really were better than ever. For once, after the great bloodbath of the war, the world really was cleared of unnatural terrors--mass starvation, mass imprisonment, mass torture, mass murder. Objectively, know-how and world law were getting their long-awaited chance to turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient place in which to sweat out Judgment Day. Paul wished he had gone to the front, and heard the senseless tumult and thunder, and seen the wounded and dead, and maybe got a piece of shrapnel through his leg. Maybe he'd be able to understand then how good everything now was by comparison, to see what seemed so clear to others--that what he was doing, had done, and would do as a manager and engineer was vital, above reproach, and had, in fact, brought on a golden age. Of late, his job, the system, and organizational politics had left him variously annoyed, bored, or queasy" (7). Okay, first of all: whether we want to admit it or not (most likely not) none of those terrors are unnatural. People think they should be, and don't get me wrong--I don't think people
should have to suffer under them either. But starvation, murder, torture--those are natural, those are from are very deepest animal roots. This posh life isn't natural, it is what man desires--and hell, I'd prefer posh to a natural, animal life, but the definitions must be absolutely clear.
Second of all, I think Proteus is completely right. I think it's incredibly appropriate to say you can't appreciate something unless if you've seen the before, especially with war in consideration. Ye-es, the revolutionary war was a
good thing (at least at the time), but I don't know what it was like to be trapped under unfair British rule. The founding fathers did good, I'm sure, or so I've been told, but I can't comprehend how much good they actually did. And yes, that is the best war example I've got. Think of a better American one.
I also mention that EPICAC computers are the supercomputers of this story. I mention EPICAC because it has survived from a short story of Vonnegut's, "EPICAC", published two years prior to this post. The narrator is lonely and in love with a coworker, and begins to explain to the computer concepts like "girl" and "beauty" and "affection". The computer falls in love with the girl and writes her poetry, which the narrator passes off as his own and gives to the girl. They are to be married, and EPICAC kills itself when it learns of this, though it leaves the narrator with five hundred poems to give to the girl. That was the very first EPICAC machine, however, and these EPICACs are version number twenty-two, I believe.
Another important character of the plot is the Shah, a lord from India, or a place that seems just as exotic as India. He provides an objective look at American life, which is clearly different from his own. Where the Shah comes from there are only the elite and the
takaru--slaves. Seeing citizens, he points them out and exclaims
takaru, takaru! His guide attempts to explain to the Shah that citizens are different from slaves but really, citizens aren't
that different. And people say the elite doesn't exist but there's obviously an upper crust that isn't pulling its own weight, let's be honest with ourselves. I mean, yay, we're getting paid and we get food and the means to survive, but hell, it may as well be indentured servitude. We didn't ask to work, we don't want to work, but we don't have a choice.
Finnerty is an engineer who Proteus knows. He lives a little--eh--carnally? Wholly? Let's put it this way, he does what he wants. If he wants to be drunk, he drinks, if he wants to have sex, he finds a girl, and he avoids excessive machinery. Proteus admits that he does enjoy it when Finnerty tells him about his "socially destructive, undisciplined antics" (35). He is intrigued by the idea of indulging in such things too, and goes so far to imagine that that may even be the key to his contentedness, but he nips that thought in the bud.
"The only insight Finnerty had ever permitted Paul was in a moment of deep depression, during a crushing hangover, when he'd sighed and said he'd never felt like he belonged anywhere" (35). This I find interesting because it is direct contrast to
The Soul of Man Under Socialism, an essay by Oscar Wilde. Now, take what I say with a grain of salt, I admit it has been a while since I've read it. Also, keep in mind that Wilde could not have possibly imagined the magnitude of what he was suggesting. Remember, the actual Victorian era wasn't actually full of steam-powered Vernes creations that would have made Henry T Ford green with envy. Wilde argues, though, with machines caring for menial labour, man will have more time to work on spiritual and intellectual growth, which is most important from a--well,
a view. (Wilde was raised with Christian beliefs, though supposedly he converted on his deathbed, after experiencing a spiritual revelation in prison... But I'm not sure about his feelings on the matter in the times in between.) So--Finnerty
should feel like he belonged somewhere--if Wilde was right, he should have found
something. But he has not. I will be coming back to this essay later, I'm sure.
Proteus's wife is at unease because of Finnerty's 'radical' ways, and therefore does not care for Finnerty at all. So when she tries to remove her husband from Finnerty's presence: "'Anita,' said Finnerty, 'if you don't show more respect for men's privacy, I'll design a machine that's everything you are, and
does show respect.' She colored. 'I can't say I find you screamingly funny.' 'Stainless steel,' said Finnerty. 'Stainless steel, covered with sponge rubber, and heated electrically to 98.6 degrees... And blushes at will,' said Finnerty. 'And I could make a man like you out of a burlap bag filled with mud,' said Anita. 'Anyone who tries to touch you comes away dirty!'" (41). Okay, so welcome to obscure references land: once upon a time, MAD magazine wasn't a parody magazine or anything. It was a varied comic book. In one of the first issues--maybe even the first--there is a comic about a futuristic society like this, only it's so far that men cannot even function without machines. They can't even walk or move on their own (the epiphany at the end is that the main character manages to move his pinky finger) and I don't remember if they show any women... but, you can buy robot women who are still the picture of society's ideal women even though real people are really like fat overgrown infants. The women come out of vending machines like coca-cola. It implies they're used for sex, but now that I think of it, how would that even...? Oh well. Anyways, that was my connection right there. Good times?
Soooo. Skip ahead thirteen pages. They're still at the party--they were at a cocktail party when Finnerty and Anita sparred. "'Atomic energy was hogging the headlines, and everybody talked as though peacetime uses of atomic energy were going to remake the world. The Atomic Age, that was the big thing to look forward to. Remember, Baer? And meanwhile, the tubes increased like rabbits.' 'And dope addiction, alcoholism, and suicide went up proportionately,' said Finnerty. 'Ed!' said Anita. 'That was after the war,' said Kroner soberly. 'It happens after every war.' 'And organized vice and divorce and juvenile delinquency, all parallel the growth of the use of the vacuum tubes,' said Finnerty. 'Oh, come on, Ed,' said Paul, 'you can't prove a logical connection between those factors.' 'If there's the slightest connection, it's worth thinking about,' said Finnerty. 'I'm sure there isn't enough connection for us to be concerned with here,' said Kroner severely. 'Or enough imagination or honesty,' said Finnerty" (54).
"'Those who live by electronics, die by electronics.
Sic semper tyrannis'" (60). Quoth Finnerty, of course. It is the shortened, slangy version of a fuller saying which means "thus always death will come to tyrants"--it sounds familar because it also happens to be what John Wilkes Booth may or may not have said when he shot Abraham Lincoln.
"'Your father though you'd be manager of Pittsburgh someday. If he were alive, nothing would make him happier than to know you got the job.' ...[Proteus] remembered how Anita, shortly after their marriage, had dug up a picture of his father from a trunk and had had it enlarged and framed as her first birthday present to him... She had never met Paul's father, and he hadn't said much about him to her; yet she'd built up a kind of mythology about the man that could keep her talking knowingly for hours" (63). I have no point about this other than the illusions the mind can cast for itself and the strength of these illusions--how you can create someone completely different as they were--but what interests me more is this phenomen occurring in memories... That is, remembering unpleasant people fondly when really they were perfect beasts. (Try out 'The Incredible World of Horace Ford' for a great example of this; it's an episode of--OH WAIT YOU GUESS THE SHOW.)
"'If somebody doesn't clip his wings, he's going right over everybody's heads one of these days.' 'Welcome to'" (63). Anita and Proteus, respectively.
Another dozen pages later, Bud is out a job--he invented a machine so good that it replaces his and the jobs of seventy-two other men. Now, that episode of the Twilight Zone I mentioned at the very first! Now I can't remember the title, of course, but the basis is that this man inherited a top manufacturing company from his pop. The man is only concerned with efficiency, so he thinks nothing of replacing 2,000 men with a machine. There's one man who's very upset, a guy who's worked with his father from the beginning. This man quits, though he's replaced anyways too... Well, the twist is that eventually someone makes a machine to replace the boss. It... It was better watched. It was a pretty good episode. It was actually one I didn't predict the end for, though my dad did... Uh, anyways, the book...
"'You think I'm insane?' said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him. 'You're still in touch. I guess that's the test.' 'Barely--
barely.' 'A psychiatrist could help. There's a good man in Albany.' Finnerty shook his head. 'He'd pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can't see from the center... Big, undreamed-of things--the people on the edge see them first'" (84).
"[Finnerty] had a candor about his few emotional attachments that Paul found disquieting. He used words to describe his feelings that Paul could never bring himself to use when speaking of a friend: love, affection, and other words generally consigned to young and inexperienced lovers. It wasn't homosexual; it was an archaic expression of friendship by an undisciplined man in an age when most men seemed in mortal fear of being mistaken for pansies for even a split second" (85). This is the only part of the book that distinctly reminds me of
Brave New World, to be honest. I mean in the unfamiliarity and even fear there is regarding the ideas of love and real affection. And by the way, if you're saying, 'but they're both about a dystopian future' et cetera, et cetera--well, yeah, but so is
1984, so is
Rant, so is
We, so is
Anthem, and more besides that. I don't think
Brave New World could decay like this. If anything, this seems more to me like the earliest stages of
1984.
So I've skipped over a lot, but where Finnerty and Paul were was at the bar (is that grammatically correct? It doesn't look right either way), a bar across the river, a bar of the 'average' citizens. Anita was waiting for them, but they just kept on putting them away. First of all, Proteus passes out shortly after two women join them in their booth. A lot of things happen in between, but--that's what's important for my means. Proteus goes home to his wife and she accuses him halfheartedly of sleeping with one of the girls, and he denies it for a while--but then he suddenly says he went to bed with one of the girls. She pretty much tunes him out, but I think it's interesting--it seems like he was trying to incite a fight, because she didn't even care that he had been out all night drinking and left her up drinking. In fact, Anita might as well have been robot, up until the very end.
Of course, Proteus becomes interested in the ideas of Finnerty, even moreso after last night when dealing with the 'average' men. Maybe the machines and all aren't worth it, maybe they must be destroyed and life must return to what it was... "If his attempt to become the new Messiah had been successful, if the inhabitants of the north and south banks had met in the middle of the bridge with Paul between them, he wouldn't have had the slightest idea of what to do next. He knew with all his heart that the human situation was a frightful botch, but it was such a logical, intelligently arrived-at botch that he couldn't see how history could possibly have led anywhere else. Paul did a complicated sum in his mind--his savings account plus his securities plus his house plus his cars--and wondered if he didn't have enough to enable him simly to quit, to stop being the instrument of any set of beliefs or any whim of history that might raise hell with somebody's life. To live in a house by the side of a road...." (115).
So this Shah fellow meets EPICAC, who runs the country. There is a human president, but he's just a figurehead. Shah is taken to meet the president(s) and he asks EPICAC a riddle which only an all-wise god who has transcended to earth can answer. When the riddle is answered, suffering will cease. The riddle is: "Silver bells shall light my way, And nine times nine maidens fill my day, And mountain lakes will sink from sight, And tigers' teeth will fill the night" (122). EPICAC, being unable to answer this riddle, is denounced as a false god by the Shah. He uses the name of the false gods by a tribe the Shah knows--and the president, caught in an awkward situation, asks how that tribe is faring. "'They all died of cholera last spring.' He added after a moment, 'Of course.' He shrugged, as though to ask what else people like that could possibly expect" (123). I don't think it's necessary to explain this passage at all.
So Paul's inward rebellion starts with thinking to hell with whatever work is in front of him as he fills it out or deals with it. He's also reading books about the outdoors and adventure. So it's not much, but it's a start.
Proteus to Finnerty: "'You know the cops are after you for not registering [as a regular citizen]?' 'Spice of life.' 'You can be jailed, you know.' 'You're afraid to live, Paul. That's what's the matter with you. You know about Thoreau and Emerson?' 'A little. About as much as you did before Lasher primed you, I'll bet.' 'Anyway, Thoreau was in jail because he wouldn't pay a tax to support the Mexican war. He didn't believe in the war. And Emerson came to jail to see him. "Henry," he said, "why are you here?" And Thoreau said, "Ralph, why
aren't you here?"' 'I should want to go jail?' said Paul, trying to get some sort of message for himself out of the anecdote. 'You shouldn't let fear of jail keep you from doing what you believe in'" (143).
The real catalyst is the Meadows--it's a job retreat, essentially. A two-week company picnic, doing all the shit that made you feel like that on field day. I know I try to keep some sort of censoring up, but there are few things I hate more and find more foolish than field day. So Proteus is depressed, thinking of this, and decides he really does want to live by his own hands--and farming is the obvious answer. Now, that's not exactly an intelligent conclusion--but as we'll see, Vonnegut doesn't let him get away with it. What Proteus thinks farming will be like is a game of Harvest Moon, essentially. He is of course caught up in the Romanticism of the bit.
So the Shah is taken to see the inventions a housewife deals with. Super-powered dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, et cetera... Anything can be cooked in under a minute, washers are super-effective... Well, as each of these devices and benefits are explained, the Shah's translator keeps on asking what next? Clothes get dried in seconds thanks to a heat-ozone lamp, and then the clothes go through a machine which irons clothes that would take an hour "before the war" (164) in only three minutes. "'And then what does she do?' asked Khashdrahr. 'And then she's done.' 'And then what?' Doctor Dodge reddened perceptibly. 'Is this a joke?'" (164). And then he asks (speaking for the Shah): "'The Shah would like to know why [the housewife] has to do everything so quickly--this in a matter of seconds, that in a matter of seconds. What is she in such a hurry to get at? What is it she has to do, that she mustn't waste any time on these things?'" (164). The Doctor goes on to say she has to live, enjoy herself--and the Shah asks how so. The housewife, Wanda, says they watch a lot of TV, and the kids do too, and it's offered to show the Shah how the ultrarsonic appliances work, only the washer has been broken and they have to wait a month for a part to come in, so Wanda has been washing clothes the 'old-fashioned' way.
But that, though important, isn't what counts to me--what Khashdrahr says is the most important. I had a mini-revelation when I read his bit--why must everything be done quickly and all.
Why? Why do we place such importance on that? Why why why? Look at them, they're just wasting it! Hell, we just waste it ourselves! But even without that! Why is it so important that we not toil? Sure, it may be unpleasant, but so? So what? Kurt Vonneguuuuuut, you blow my miiiiiiind.
"'That man's got a lot of get up and go,' said Anita. 'He fills me full of lie down and die,' said Paul" (172).
Well, Paul takes Anita on a drive through the poorer section, you know--and Anita freaks out and all. Actually a nervousness there, and the fact that she seemed to outright hate the common man suggests to me now that she clawed her way up out of that by marrying Paul Proteus. Well, anyways. "'Nobody's going to hurt you. These people are just your fellow Americans.' 'Just because they were born in the same part of the world as I was, that doesn't mean I have to come down here and wallow with them'" (174). I don't think it's necessary to point out who's saying what.
The two have a fight, too: "'I could cut out my tongue for having said those things.' 'Don't use any of our good kitchen knives'" (178). Kind of funny, I thought. And again--no need to point out who's saying what, I think it's a pretty easy guess...
Anyways... Proteus went and bought himself a farm. It has an overseer, but still... That's where he's taking Anita, in an attempt to have her realize what he himself has realized. Anita, unsurprisingly, is less than receptive and instead of meeting it with appall--she meets it with a mechanized brain, thinking what could replaced with machines to make it more efficent, et cetera. She can't even comprehend what her husband means. When Proteus attempts to make her realize the harm machines have done to humans, she responds with a little result of brainwashing or just flat-out stupidity, I haven't decided what would be worse: "'If someone has brains,' said Anita firmly, 'he can still get to the top. That's the American way, Paul, and it hasn't changed.' She looked at him appraisingly. 'Brains and nerves, Paul.' 'And blinders'" (184).
And Anita placates him with sex, to be quite frank. Paul tires of arguing, and it says: "[He] gave himself over to the one sequence of events that had never failed to provide a beginning, a middle, and a satisfactory end" (185). Now, that,
that I think is sad. If sex is the only thing that is all the way right through and through? Nothing else satisfies you, leaves you content in life? Just sex? I don't think that's a good sign at all. If that's the only good thing that's going for you, you are in a pretty poor way, or so I'd think...
"'With every step he hammers another nail into my coffin'" (179).
So the Shah gets his hair cut. And I guess barbers talk a lot, I wouldn't know, girls don't go to barbers. And the barber talks about how you know, in peacetime you never really have a chance to get famous or to be remembered. He may be the greatest barber in the world, but he couldn't do so in a blaze of glory or something. He talks about this fellow who was away from home for two years when his wife wrote him and said she had a baby. Something in him snapped and he killed dozens of enemies in blind rage before being ripped to shreds. His point was that this soldier, Elm Wheeler, was great thanks to the war, but in peacetime, he wouldn't be remembered or anything. And he goes on to say that people deep down want a war or a big fire or something, so they can do something heroic and be remembered, but the machines kind of nullify those possibilities.
He also says another nice thing about war--not exactly nice, but... comforting? The comforting thing about war is that if you're fighting in it, you don't question if you're right. You're being shot at and you are shooting back. That's it. Now granted, I've never been directly involved in a war as a soldier, and I don't think the barber had either, but I think with the dehumanizing that existed at least back then (keep in mind that this book was written about five years after WWII), that's a concept that stands up pretty well...
So the real turning point occurs during the company picnic. It kicks off with a play touting their society, and although the argument for their society is made seemingly correctly (they address issues 'radicals' have with the society), it is flawed (they answer the issues with red herrings). Of course, the man who wrote it is as foolish and brainwashed as the rest of them, so I'd imagine he just spit out blind patriotism when he was stumped...Anyways, my first note is on the name of the character who they use to tout the modern society. His name is John Averageman. Of course, this recalls the play
Everyman, whose main character is John Everyman. That play is about redemption and what one must do to avoid going to hell, et cetera, but I think it's an important thing to note that the John in this book's play is only
Averageman. The men watching the play, none of them, are that man.
So, Averageman complains that his wages are lower, he doesn't feel like he's worth anything anymore, and so on. An Engineer, young and handsome, representing society, asks him if, before the war, did he have--well, what is essentially socialism, universal medical insurance, a twenty-eight inch television set, a pension, a laundry machine, and this that and the other thing. Of course, Averageman did not but now he does, thanks to the new society with the machines and all. Here's how the conversation continues--
"YOUNG ENG[INEER]. John, you've heard of Julius Caesar?... John, do you suppose that Caesar, with all his power and wealth, with the world at his feet, do you suppose he had what you, Mr. Averageman, have today?
JOHN. (
Surprised) Come to think of it, he didn't. Huh! What do you know?
RADICAL. (
Furiously) I object! What has Caesar got to do with it?
YOUNG ENG. Your honor, the point I was trying to make was that John, here, since the star in question has risen, has become far richer than the wildest dreams of Caesar or Napoleon or Henry VIII! Or
any emperor in history! Thirty dollars, John--yes, that is how much money you make. But, not with all his gold and armies could Charlemagne have gotten one single electric lamp or vacuum tube! He would have given anything to get the security and health package you have, John. But could he get it? No!" (216). After this, the Radical never speaks again, and the play ends with patriotic, feel-good BS. But you see the red herring? It's
nothing! It's progress! Charlemagne couldn't have gotten those things because they didn't exist, and quite frankly, he did quite well enough without them. So the Romans didn't have computers! They had plumbing! How long did it take for us to figure out how to do that again? And quite frankly, plumbing is more important than automation, so far as I'm concerned. They had what they positively needed and, I admit, then some... but my point is that we don't need what the
Player Piano society has.
They made the wealth. Am I making sense?
"An awakening conscience, unaccompanied by new wisdom, made his life so damned lonely, he decided he wouldn't much mind being dead" (221). Proteus, of course. Also, Vonnegut's use of commas drives me a little mad in a bad way, not that I'm one to talk about overuse of commas...
While the invited workers are at the bar, the highest up are at the Council House. Because it is a still summer night, though, the voices from the men in the bar carry: "The shouts and songs that floated over the greensward from the saloon, Paul noted, had a piping quality. There wasn't the inimitable hoarseness of an honest-to-God drunk in the lot. It was unthinkable that there was a man in the saloon without a glass in his hand, but it was also unlikely that many men would have their glasses filled more than once. They didn't drink at the Meadows now the way they used to in the old days when Finnerty and Shepherd and Paul had joined the organization. It used to be that they'd come up to the Meadows to relax and really tie one on as a relief from the terribly hard work of war production. Now the point seemed to be to pretend drunkenness, but to stay sober and discard only those inhibitions and motor skills one could do safely without" (225).
Proteus meets with the eldest member of the company and reflects on that man's rise to the top: by chance, really, nothing less than a Horatio Alger, pulling oneself up by their bootstraps sort of deal. He ends this thought with "It could never happen again. The machines would never stand for it" (228). Thus, the American dream really would be dead, no?
"'Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dreams, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go'" (236). What I've neglected to tell you is that Proteus quits his job, then goes to the bar to drink it away--only to be told he will not be served. So he punches the bartender out and creates a scene, and then he finds his wife having sex with Shepherd.
"And Paul waved wanly, apathetically. This was goodbye to his life so far, to the whole of his father's life. He hadn't had the satisfaction of telling someone he'd quit, of being believed; but he'd quit. Goodbye. None of this had anything to do with him any more. Better to be nothing than a blind doorman at the head of civilzation's parade. And as Paul said these things to himself, a wave of sadness washed over them as though they'd been written in sand. He was understanding now that no man could live without roots--roots in a patch of desert, a red clay field, a mountain slope, a rocky coast, a city street. In black loam, in mud or sand or rock or asphalt or carpet, every man had his roots down deep--in
home. A lump grew in his throat, and he couldn't do anything about it. Doctor Paul Proteus was saying goodbye forever to home" (237).
So what of Paul? With no wife, no life, he just kind of wandered about the lower-class areas. He has yet to join the underground rebellion against the machines, but we'll get there, just hold onto your hats...
"The town hall clock struck four. It might have struck midnight or seven or one, for all the difference it made to Paul. He didn't have to be anywhere at any time any more--ever, he supposed. He made up his own reasons for going somewhere, or he went without reasons. Nobody had anything for him to do anywhere. The economy was no longer interested" (266). I added the last line so this wouldn't be confused with an optimistic look at freedom. And, I have to say, this reminds me of what may or may not be a related passage from Ralph Ellison's
Invisible Man. The narrator is walking through the streets of New York City for the first time, and he is in awe of the fact that no-one knows him--that he could completely reinvent himself if he so desired, and no-one else would ever be none the wiser. He could do or be whatever the hell he wanted. The tones are really different--but maybe I'm not so crazy for connecting the two? And while I'm thinking of it, as much as I didn't like that book, I think I need to reread it.
Actually, I think that's a good connection! The Ghost Shirts make up their whole plan for rebellion and rising and plan on just using Proteus as a figurehead. Sort of like the narrator in
Invisible Man... Well, their mantra is, "'Take the world away from the machines... and give it back to the people'" (291). I like that. But, they leave Proteus in a room to rest and prepare. He objects and: "'You don't matter,' said Finnerty. 'You belong to History now'" (291).
So the Ghost Shirts make a carefully concocted letter that they have signed with Paul's name. Of course, there's an irony in the fact that it's just as synthesized as everything else in their world, but there's a passage in it that I particularly liked: "'Man has survived Armageddon in order to enter the Eden of eternal peace, only to discover that everything he had looked forward to enjoying there, pride, dignity, self-respect, work worth doing, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption'" (301). Again, this reminds me of the narrator in
Invisible Man... (By the way, I'm not being lazy or forgetful. The main character in
Invisible Man really doesn't have a name.)
"'Blessed are fetishists. Inherited earth,' tapped Paul" (307).
"'You can't ask men to attack pillboxes cold sober,' said Finnerty. 'And you can't ask them to stop when they're drunk,' said Paul" (330). So the people are semi-successful--they ransack the town, destroy pretty much all the machinery... And then, in the midst of all this, they find an automated drink machine, an automated soda fountain sort of deal. People are waiting excitedly around a man working the thing--Bud Calhoun, fixing it, getting orange drink out of it, much to the delight of those huddled around him. And there is the promise that things will go back to what they were--which is negative, but purely logical, you know? It makes sense, it's all a lot of those people have ever known. And if not it being all that they've ever known, it's certainly what they'd prefer. Well, at least Bud can be happy...
And I love the very end of the book. I have to quote it here. Don't read it if you don't want to. "And that left Paul. 'To a better world,' he started to say, but he cut the toast short, thinking of the people of Ilium, eager to recreate the same old nightmare. He shrugged. 'To the record,' he said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock. Von Neumann considered Paul and then the broken glass. 'This isn't the end, you know,' he said. 'Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be--not even Judgment Day.' 'Hands up,' said Lasher almost gaily. 'Forward March'" (341).
MLA citation information: Vonnegut, Kurt.
Player Piano. The Dial Press: New York, 2006.
Wow.... my wrists hurt from writing all of this, even over the course of a week. I don't really have the gumption to write anymore right now, save that I like this book a whole lot (as you may or may not have been able to tell). It's definitely on the meatier side for a Vonnegut book. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to run to dinner!
Timequake next, then
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!
Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics:
You're the Good Things by Modest Mouse
This post's cryptic song lyrics: Got a machine head, better than the rest, green to red, machine head, green to red--I walk from my machine, I walk from my machine...
PS. This was a particularly long post as I'm sure you've noticed, and for the first time in a while the spellchecker has protested. So I apologize in hindsight for any erroneous spelling.
