Player Piano

Paul is now on his own. He returns to the farmhouse but finds the work too hard. He then returns to the plant, to collect his personal things, and now spends his days watching TV. He watches a show where the mother tells her son that people with high IQs have more trouble. She tells him that he shouldn’t worry about having a low IQ because life’s easier for them this way.

The doorbell rings. A policeman questions Paul about not registering. He tells Paul to come to the station in an hour to register himself and turn in all of his special privilege cards.

Paul goes to the police station and fills out the forms. He gets his new card, which says that he is a potential saboteur. Outside the station, he sees Doctor Fred Garth being arrested and taken in. He can’t believe it.

Alfy spots Paul and invites him into the bar. Alfy tells Paul that whole wait-staff “got sacked,” and that the managers had to service themselves (267).

Paul questions the bartender about Finnerty, but the bartender says nothing. He gives Paul his drink, which is drugged. Paul passes out.

Doctor Harold Roseberry, the head coach of the Cornell football team, is in his expansive office. He thinks about how Cornell hasn’t supported the football team for a number of years financially. College football has become like professional sports with professional athletes who are not students.

A young prospect that Roseberry wants to play for the team, Buck Young, calls Roseberry. Roseberry convinces him to meet for a drink.

He arrives at the bar and finds two linemen sipping on a beer. They discuss how unjust it is that they have to join the Reeks when their careers are over, and they’re broke. Roseberry points out that they make a lot of money but squander it all on mansions and cars.

Buck arrives. Roseberry says, “I’m prepared to offer you thirty thousand, Buck, six hundred a week, all year round, startin’ tomorrow. What do you say?” (278). Buck is torn between that offer and his studies at Cornell. He can’t do both. Ed Harrison overhears them and tells them about his misadventures working for Ilium. He encourages Buck to play football and give up on engineering.

Halyard arrives at the bar, too, and wants to discuss his physical fitness test that he’s supposed to make up. Roseberry tells him that he will do it personally. Halyard is happy about this, until Roseberry reads an old letter that Halyard wrote once condemning some public actions of Roseberry. Halyard is now worried. He and the Shah leave. Buck accepts the offer: “’Yes,’ whispered Buck. ‘Hell yes’” (284). 

Paul, under the influence of a truth drug, tells Lasher and Finnerty everything that happened to him. He tells them that he was fired under a pretense and that he really planned to quit. Mixed with that reality, he also has dreams of Anita and Kroner dancing.

As he regains some sense of where he is, he sees Finnerty’s face. “‘You’re on our side,’” Finnerty tells him, “‘If you’re not with them, you’re with us!’” (287). They want to join the cause of the Ghost Shirt Society, which they explain was a 19th-century Native American organization that was supposed to the battle the white man’s theft of their value systems. “The machines,” Lasher says, “are to practically everybody what the white men were to the Indians” (289-290).

They tell Paul that he will be new Messiah, not Finnerty. They tell him that he doesn’t have to do anything, that he will be used anyway.

Paul is led into the meeting of the Ghost Shirts. Everyone stands and claps for him. He notices “Lasher […] Bud Calhoun, Katharine Finch, Luke Lubbock […] Mr. Haycox, and a score of others, whose names Paul didn’t know” (292).

Lasher leads the meeting by calling on different people to make reports about the revolution efforts. Bud has a plan for an armored car to break through Ilium. Paul says that he want to leave, but Finnerty tells him that he would have to kill him, as Paul is supposed to be their leader.

The group discusses plans to destroy EPICAC. A letter that they plan to send out is read. It comments on the inhumanity of the machines. It is already signed, “Paul Proteus.”

They hear gunshots;the police have found them. Everyone scatters. Paul eventually finds himself running alone. A police officer clubs him down. They think Proteus is far away by now, and don’t recognize him: “You just got brained for savin’ Proteus’ hide, Why’n’t you wise up?” (304). 

Vonnegut writes that “Paul’s cellmate in the basement of police Headquarters was a small, elegant young Negro named Harold, who was in jail for petty sabotage” (305). Harold explains to Paul that he did the crime and isn’t sorry, so he has to stay in jail for five days.

He hears some tapping on the wall to an adjoining cell. It’s Garth. Paul and Garth speak to each other through tapping. Garth explains that they arrested him for stripping the tree of its bark. He was upset because his son didn’t pass the exams.

Visitors arrive for Paul: Anita and Kroner. They greet Paul and commend him on a job well done. Kroner’s impressed with the letter, even if he couldn’t really understand it. Kroner offers Paul the job of Manager of Engineering, which Baer used to have. Paul asks what happened to Baer. “He read that fool letter, cleaned out his desk drawers, and walked out,” Kroner tells Paul (309). Paul’s happy and impressed his letter had that effect.

Kroner sets up a microphone, so that Paul can testify about who leads the Ghost Shirts and who the members are. Paul tells them that he, Paul, is their actual leader: “The instant he said it, he knew it was true, and knew what his father had known—what it was to belong and believe” (310). 

Paul is on trial for treason. There is a true or false indicator: “[a] needle on the dial […] pivoted so as to swing easily between a black T on the right and a red F on the left, or to a series of arbitrarily calibrated points between them” (311).

The prosecutor looks angrily at Paul and asks him a series of questions about the events with the Ghost Shirts. Paul uses each question as an opportunity to speak into the TV cameras and tell of the philosophy of the movement. He tells the truth, until one question: “Doctor, your part in this plot to overthrow the—ah—machines: you say it was motivated solely by your desire to serve the American people?” (315). Paul concedes that this may not be true. The prosecutor accuses Paul of hating the machines because of an unconscious hatred of his father.

Paul isn’t sure what to do or say. Finally, he admits that this may be true, but that this makes him human, and it’s humanity that the machines are attempting to strip away.

They hear a parade out of the window: “A brickbat shattered a courtroom window, showering the American flag to the judge’s right with bits of glass” (318). 

The Shah and Halyard are in a limo going through Ilium, toward New York City. Halyard did not pass the exam, and so is being sued for fraud because he should not have a PhD, and, thus, he should not have any paychecks. He has kept up appearances for the Shah.

The driver spot the parade up ahead. There are men with guns and swords. The drive is scaredand does not want to move through. The Shah puts a knife on his neck and forces him to get them to the courthouse.

Tumult ensues. The parade eventually tears the doors off of the courthouse, with parade members lifting Paul up as a hero. After an hour, they depart for Ilium. Halyard orders the driver to take them to police station. The driver says, “You think you can order me around, just because you’ve got a Ph.D. and I’ve got nothing but a B.S.?” (323). He is, however, forced to drive them to the station, which is empty when they arrive. People there knock out the Shah, Halyard, and Khashdrahr. When they awake, the Shah and his interpreter are mistaken for parade soldiers and sent to defend a wall.

Lasher and Finnerty talk over the intercoms. It turns out that many of the revolutions were successful around the country. “Pittsburgh’s the key,” Lasher reminds them (326). Paul emergesand says that if they are victorious, the hard part then really begins. 

In the aftermath of the battle, Paul, Finnerty, von Neumann and Lasher are gathered, talking about the unsuccessful takeover of the Pittsburgh plant and others. It seems that they didn’t manage to wrest control everywhere. Many of the revolutionaries destroyed every machine, including traffic boxes and toilets. Paul didn’t think it would happen exactly like this.

A helicopter appears overhead. “People of Ilium,” someone inside the copter says, “lay down your arms…surrender your false leaders” (331). The helicopter is then shot down.

Paul and Finnerty go for a walk. They feel bad, in a way, for all that’s happened. They reminisce about their early days as engineers. When they return to Lasher, they ask him about the “original Ghost Shirt Society” (333). He tells them that they were unsuccessful and died. “You thought we were sure to lose?” Paul asks him (333). Lasher admits that he did think they would lose, but that he wanted it go down on the record. 

The men drive through Ilium and notice all of the broken machinery lying on the ground. They decide that it’s good that everything is destroyed: “We’ll heat our water and cook our food and light and arm our homes with wood fires,” Lasher says (336). 

They spot a group of people gathered around a soda machine. Bud Calhoun and other men are attempting to fix it, and they plan on fixing a good many other machines in town. They’ve found themselves useful again.

Seeing this, the four leaders decide to turn themselves in. They drive toward the blockade and walk toward the police.