The character whom I am going to write about is the main character of Kurt Vonnegut's book Player Piano. His name is Paul Proteus. This book was written in 1952, originally published by Dell Publishing, New York. It is a future vision of the United States of America. It is a very depressing but very possible and probable vision.. Nowadays themes like this are considered classical and almost not worth writing about but we must see Player Piano as a book of considerably high age.
The book has a very well created atmosphere of people's dependence on machines and technology. The society experienced terror and starvation during world wars. The Last War was led mainly by machines and automatical weapons which were only supervised by human beings. And I think this moment determined the future role of the mankind. Firstly the people changed from workers to controllers, then to supervisors and managers, and then finally to a superfluous mass, not needed anymore. The machines and their technology can 'survive' without any human assistance.
Everything is controlled by machines and computers and depends on productivity. The managers and engineers only create new programes for more productive production. Even the rates of production and consumption are calculated by a computer - by EPICAC, which is seated in the enormly large Carlsbad cavern system. The EPICAC and its computer-slaves even determine the people's carreers and this way their whole lives. They give intelligence tests to everyone and on the base of their results they sort people into two categories - suitable for university entering exams and suitable for 'work'. The university studies allow their graduates to become managers, engineers, writers or public relation workers. You may become a writer only if you get a university degree, the literature is heavily censored and you may write only 'suitable' facts and create stories after authorized settings. Ordinary people were degraded into a role of passive consumers. They do not have to work anymore, the only really working jobs are either supervisors in industry or agriculture, or reconstruction and restoration groups, or soldiers. But supervisors do not have any work; reconstruction and restoration workers are too numerous to work really; and soldiers are bullied cruelly.
The majority of population is bored since they have everything they need, all their homework is done by automatons and machines, and their only job is entertainment. But who likes to be entertained all the time, with no work or effort? It gets boring in some time, too. Thus saboteurship is a very modern hobby.
Dr Paul Proteus lives in the city of Ilium, N.Y. The city is divided into three major parts: The northwest is occupied by the managers and engineers, in the northeast there is a large industrial plant, quite a large city itself, and in the south, across the river, there is the town for ordinary people, who are the rough majority. He is employed in the Illium Industrial Plant as a general manager. His only work is to rule the factory so that its productivity still increases and so that there are no saboteurs. All the other is controlled by computers. He is a married, thirty five years old, tall and thin man of darkish skin. His father was a celebrated founder of the local industrial plant and its first general manager. All Paul's carreer is before him, waiting for him. He is an aspirant for a better job - he might grow up in the hierarchy of the American industry - be offered the seat of general manager of the state industrial division. His wife Anite relies on him and she still keeps telling him to be a correct son of his father. She trains him in the hierarchy rules and opportunitism. He feels he should follow his father's tracks but he is not very fond of being a general manager. He doesn not knot of any better job and in fact he even would not want to get any. He tries to be as best a s possible although he finds no interest in his job. His kind and fatherly superior Kroner relies on him because he used to be an old friend of Paul's father in the days of his life. Kroner sees the old Mr Proteus in Paul and treats him so. He trusts in Paul's powers and abilities and he would like to see him in the highest possible post.
Paul has got an old university friend which character is very important for this book though not mentioned very often. His name is Ed Finnerty. He is the fatal character for Paul because he is the one who makes Paul realize his real position and all the people's real positions. He is said to be a hygiene-mindless drunkard and stupid. Truly he is a drunkard, truly he does not care much about his image and visage, but no way is he stupid. He is only able to see the life and his own role in it as it really is. Ed Finnerty is the one who shows Paul the real life of the ordinary people beyond the river - the life they lead is terribly poor and pitiful despite all the technology that serves them. In fact they are slaves of the technology. They are so bored that they find entertainment in the meanest things like sitting in pubs and drinking till loss of conscience. Edward visits Paul one evening and he takes him to a pub. There they get known with a few interesting people including some revolutionaries. Some of the people he meets there speak to him nicely and are glad to see him as the one who helped them find a job. Those are the workers from his factory. Some of the others speak to him in hatred and envy; and some of them see a potentional colaborant in their revolutionary plans. Finnerty has had such and similar plans and ideas before, so it is not very hard for those revolutionaries to get him on their side, but Paul is a more difficult case. Finally he gets drunk with them and that is more sober state for him than if he were really sober - because he starts thinking of things he never did think before. He never needed to: this was, to sum it up, the first time he even came to the other side of the river, among the ordinary people. And this is the key moment, the turning point of all the story. Now when he knows the mean people's thoughts and feelings of needlessness and hopelessness, he starts to think about the system of the society and social life. About his professional carrer which he starts to see not as important as it seemed to him before, and about the revolution. He starts planning. Firstly he wants to remain only an internal revolutionary. He buys a farm, one of the last in the country, and he tells his wife to come to live there with him. She is happy because she has always liked the rural-like way of decorating interieurs... But when she finds this is not rural-like but really rural, she does not feel happy at all. Since Paul insists on staying a farmer, she wants to divorce him. He quiets her down and they live separately, he in the farm and she in the city house. And then the things begin to move. In those days, the revolutionary group called the Devil's Shirt Brotherhood start acting. Firstly they just gather new members and make plans. They make a small pum attack sometimes. The leadership of the industry learns about them and tries to spy them off to destroy them as a saboteur group. Paul is invited to Kroner, his superior. He learns he is the one for the seat of the recently deceased state industrial general manager, so he would come after him to taht excellent job. Paul is not interested in this anymore, so he tells Kroner he will stop working in industry. He means he is disgusted by the system but Kroner cannot understand it and thinks Paul just wants to become a secret contra-spy to spy against the revolutionary group. So he manages a 'shadow-firing' of Dr Proteus so that Paul could work as a spy among the Devil's Shirt Brethren. The Brethren learn about this firing and try to make Paul a real member of their Brotherhood. They think he would not come spontaneously so they kidnap him. They have created a whole network of local Brotherhoods which are centrally ruled from Ilium. By the way, one of the highest members of the Hood is Edward Finnerty. The Illium Hood composes an official letter to the government which is in fact like one of the proclamations that start wars. It is a ultimative message, it clearly says the people are bored and disgusted by nowadays system and that they want a change. They would use violence if the government would not accept their requests. The letter is subscribed by Paul Proteus's name although he had absolutely nothing to do with all of it. In fact, he is being hidden in a cell as a prisoner, he is only an Official Head of the Brotherhood, just a puppet to be shown to people. From this you can see that the idea of revolution was not bad at all, but it turned worse with the people's want for might. So it happens. The government does not accept their request which means violence is used. People go mad, most of them encouraged by strong drinking, and destroy machinery in general. They do not really care about which machine is really bad and which might be helpful or needful, they do not distinguish, they just smash all down. The army makes a counterstrike, so the revolution is finished soon by violence. Paul does not belong anywhere now. The revolutionaries blame him for the bad success, the industrial bosses treat him like a traitor and his own wife who said she loved him divorces him and marries his carreer-enemy. All his life is beaten, he has nothing, his university degree is taken from him so that now he has no qualification. The government leads a trial against him that is broadcasted by the television, and they turn all the fact upside down and inside out so that Paul looks like the worst and meanest, so that any revolution looks like a complete nonsense and that the present system is the best.
In the end of the book, Paul is completely abandonned, lost and arrested. He looks at masses of people who regret their own deeds and repair the machines they have destroyed not long ago.
So, this is the character and the story that touched me most from those I have read recently. I think it is a true life story, it could happen almost anywhere and anytime. This theme is, in my opinion, immortal and infinite, and the story of Dr Paul Proteus from the Illium Industrial Plant is just one of many similar. Now I must confess that I have read only the Czech translation of this book, but despite that I think it is a very good and true book. Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut jr. is possibly the best critical fiction I have ever read.
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