60 pages • 2 hours read
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.Player Piano
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 12-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary
Paul and Anita arrive at the Kroner home, which is a “Victorian mansion, perfectly restored and maintained down the filigree along the eaves, and the iron spikes along the roof peak” (123). They exchange niceties, and the men—Paul and Kroner—go into the other room, where Kroner keeps his antique guns.
Kroner claims to already know about the previous night with Finnerty. He says the police are looking for Finnerty. Kroner tells Paul to not bother explaining about the previous night, and that it’s all in the past, while he pretends to shoot at ducks with his shotgun. Kroner goes on about progress and how Finnerty is against it.
“Paul—Pittsburgh is still open,” Kroner suddenly says, “The field has been narrowed down to two men” (128). It’s between Fred Garth, an older and more devoted Ilium manager and Paul, who has the creativity Kroner wants but not the loyalty. Kroner approaches Paul, puts his hand on his knee, and asks him to open up. Paul does: “His formless misgivings and disquiet of a week before […] had shape now” (130).
Kroner makes Paul a deal. If Paul is willing to say that he was at the bar on a reconnaissance mission for Kroner because Finnerty and Lasher are both saboteurs, then Paul can still have the job in Pittsburgh.
When they return to the parlor room, Kroner puts on a record—an ancient way of listening to music—because it settles him. They all listen to the record, dancing.
Chapter 13 Summary
In bed that night, Paul thinks about the effect of revealing that he plans to quit to Anita: “He wasn’t going to tell Anita that he was quitting for a long time, not until she was ready” (135). He doesn’t want to lose her, so he plans to introduce her to a new way of living first.He tells her he loves her.
Chapter 14 Summary
Paul moves about his days with a new sense of excitement because he plans to quit. A box with his jerseys for the annual team-building contest of various outdoor activities arrives. He is the captain of the blue team. Shepherd is the captain of the green team.
Katherine wishes she could participate and practices the blue team’s song. After discussing the pros and cons of the contest, Finnerty shows up at the front gate of Ilium again. Paul playfully orders him to be escorted up: “Bind his hands and feet, put a bag over his head, and have four men bring him up” (141).
Finnerty, like Kroner, claims to already know a lot about Paul and his trouble with the law. Finnerty needs the keys to the car, so he can grab his stuff out of Paul’s house to move in with Lasher. They discuss that jail shouldn’t deter someone from doing what they want to do. Paul gives him the keys.
Kroner calls Paul, telling him that the Finnerty and Lasher business is a big deal and that he’s called Washington: “They say the whole thing ought to be well planned at the top level” (144). Kroner then tells him that he, too, is on the blue team, while Baer is on the white team.
After hanging up, Paul dreams of owning a farm: “Farming—now there was a magic word” (147). He remembers an old farmhouse that no one owns, which isn’t part of the large farm system. He calls his real estate agent. The agent wonders why Paul would want “a museum exhibit” with “almost nothing mechanical on the place” (148). Paul plans to check it out that day.
Chapter 15 Summary
Paul enters the farmhouse, where Doctor Pond, the realtor, waits for him. Pond refuses to sell the place to Paul until Paul tells him that it is just a project of his—that it will not be his permanent residency.
Mr. Haycox, an old man who’s been taking care of the place for a long time, enters the room. He becomes upset that Paul has bought the place. Haycox demands to be able to keep working on the farm. He feels that it is his farm:“This here is my farm more’n it’s anybody else’s. I’m the only man who ever cared about it, ever did anything about it” (155). Paul says that he’ll keep him on but will visit with Anita occasionally on the weekends.
Chapter 16 Summary
Anita makes a list of things for Paul to pack and mentions that she helped Shepherd do the same. Shepherd has been telling Anita the details of Paul and Kroner’s deal. Paul gets upset at Shepherd.
He asks Anita if she knows what the next Wednesday is. She doesn’t remember. It is their engagement anniversary, and Paul plans to do something special with Anita to celebrate: “The anniversary, more to the point, fell at an ideal time for the beginning of his re-education program for Anita” (159).
Chapter 17 Summary
The Shah Bratpuhr, who wishes to see “the home of a typical Takaru,” visits Edgar Hagstrohm, an average worker, and his wife Wanda (161). The machines guessed all the events of Edgar’s life, except his second affair with his best friend’s wife, Marion. His friend died, and Edgar and Marion have been seeing each other ever since.
The Shah enters the home, refuses to shake hands with Edgar, and begins touching everything curiously. They question the family about why they like it in the house, and what it means for them to have free time or living time. The Shah then leaves.
Edgar tells his wife that he has been having an affair. She already knows, tells him that it’s okay, and cries. They have dinner with the kids. The Shah knocks on the glass. “Live!” says Krashdrahr(169).
Chapters 12-17 Analysis
Early in the section, Paul receives an ultimatum from Kroner to undermine Finnerty and Lasher, and, thus, earn his position in Pittsburgh. For Paul, however, this ultimatum gives him a renewed sense of purpose—the answer to the question that he’s been wrestling with for some time. He knows now that he cannot do something so underhanded to his friend, and will, therefore, quit his job. There’s a sense of ease, satisfaction and calm that comes over Paul with this knowledge. He even finds himself attempting to renew his love for Anita. Her love, however, may be waning, as shown by the reversal in the tone of their I-love-you’s, as she now puts emphasis on the you: “Anita, I love you,” Paul says (136). “I love you, Paul,” like his own reply in the previous chapters, is her answer.
Has Paul romanticized the pasttoo much? Is he setting himself up to be disappointed? For Paul, it seems his trust in the old way, the imprecise, is implicit and complete. When he is at the aging farmhouse he intends to buy, he notices that the antique grandfather clock is off by sixteen minutes: “Indulging an atavistic whim, he set his watch to correspond with the hands of the relic, which grated and creaked away the seconds, sounding like a wooden ship straining in a strong wind” (153). This symbolizes Paul’s release of the need for precision and accurateness, and his embracing of a more messy, imprecise and hard existence.
This messy existence takes shape in Chapter 17, when Edgar’s life is put on display for the Shah and the reader alike. Edgar does seem to the average citizen (and to the Shah, who studies his habits), as if Edgar and his family were in a zoo. Living for the Hagstrohm family, it seems, means attempting to make meaning in their lives, despite the fact that meaning has been all but stripped away from them by the impersonality of the society in which they find themselves.
Related Titles
By Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
