player piano

Throughout the entire book of Player Piano, I had been thinking about the title and it was significant to the work as a whole. In the first few chapters there is a player piano in the bar that Paul goes to with Finnerty. The word choice in this particular section is interesting because the author states that its a player piano, not just a regular piano. "Finnerty sat at the player piano, savagely improvising on the brassy, dissonant antique". (105) An original piano is a "machine", however this machine would be merely a pretty piece of wood if there were not a talented musician to play it. However a player piano is a machine that plays itself, stripping away any of the talent and human aspect from the music. Vonnegut uses the player piano as a symbol of machines taking over too much of what should remain human in society.