Player Piano... thoughts...

I don't know how much I fully enjoyed PLAYER PIANO. Although I found it interesting and easily a depiction of what the future may hold, the novel as a whole didn't fully capture my attention. The ending wasn't what I thought it was going to be and this changed the meaning of the book for me. I became connected with Paul in a way and hoped that he and the revolutionaries would succeed in taking down the machine-controlled nation. The novel, which ended in the society turning back to the machines they fought so hard to destroy, really was disappointing to me. I was hoping that Paul would succeed, even though Paul didn't full heartedly agree to everything he was doing.

The book itself, although having a point and making it very clear, was a let down for me because I had hoped things would change by the end of the novel. I also disliked the characters in the book, Paul included. I thought that Paul was indecisive and I saw his character to be weak in a sense. Even though he was finally caught with his cause, his struggle throughout the novel is understandable; however his constant changes in opinion bothered me. Like D-503 in WE, he believed in an ideal and didn't really want to let go of the hope and promise that came from that ideal.

Although the book was difficult for me to find wholeheartedly enjoyable I thought that Vonnegut's message was that of a frightful truth. Humans already are being replaced by machines and who is to say in the next hundred or so years that we are almost relying entirely on them. Like in HARRISON BERGERON, PLAYER PIANO paints a picture of a depressing future, but uses elements of dark comedy to give it a surprisingly believable quality.