Brašna's Reviews > The Adding Machine

If you like dystopia, go ahead and read this. A short play about the world we live in even now. You mind find yourself lost after reading this, though. But don't worry, Hope is just around the corner.
Below is an analysis I wrote in class containing spoilers:
(view spoiler)[What features of literary expressionism can we find in the play Adding Machine by Elmer Rice?
The world we can see in E. Rice’s play Adding Machine, like Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World, represents a slightly augmented reality of capitalism that may be familiar to us even now. The main character is called by a name suggesting he could be anybody but also how unimportant he really is. He is just a digit in the whole machinery we live in, working shifts, living in an unfulfilling marriage. To this extent, the play depicts a society not so different from what we can already witness in some places. The unveiling of the whole system comes after he murders his boss, only to find out there is no final judgment, no fires of hell awaiting the sinner. The machinery itself is the never-ending torture of recycled souls, whose life does not improve when they are sent back. Perhaps this way, the author is asking if it is all worth the effort or if we are all just spare parts waiting to be repurposed both in our working positions and in life. (hide spoiler)]