Player Piano

Kurt Vonnegut’s black humor made a book that I found just barely bearable-at least tolerable. At this point I was more than sick of dystopia novels but in spite of its complicated and detailed story I enjoyed and appreciated Vonnegut’s writing style. His humor made it comfortable for someone to examine the possibilities of what is already occurring in society today and forced me to seriously consider how much I let impersonal machines do the simple things in life for me. Illium’s intricate works triggered memories of a field trip I had taken when I was little and made me wonder at how close to that scary society we already are. His novel certainly was one of the most eye openings, second in my opinion to only We and at that not by much of a margin.

"Anita slept-- utterly satisfied, not so much by Paul as by the social orgasm of, after years of the system's love play, being offered Pittsburgh" (page 135).
Just the very comparison of a job opportunity to intimacy show how mechanic this society has become. Anita has had much social foreplay and actually seems to enjoy it more than sex itself. Her main concern lies in Pittsburg, which has become the “finished product” of a successful life time to her. Her job is simply as machine-like as anything in Illium and this just shows that Paul himself even knows that.

I felt that Paul Proteus was a cowardly character. He rarely finds a way to challenge himself, allows his wife (that he does not love) run his life for him, and even when faced with the exact truth of the way things are, he puts it aside. In my opinion Vonnegut intentionally made him cowardly as to make his decisions that pull away from society more dramatic. I felt however that this only made his character more pathetic in that after so much time he finally brought the necessary thought to the obvious.