30 pages • 1 hour read
Elmer RiceThe Adding Machine
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1929A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Scene 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 3 Summary
This scene opens in the Zeros’ dining room, just as Zero has arrived home. Mrs. Zero is visibly upset and can be seen looking at the clock. She immediately chides Zero for being an hour late for their supper, when he knows they have company coming over that night–the Ones, Twos, Threes, Fours, Fives, and Sixes are all expected. She continues to admonish him for his lack of ambition and the poor likelihood he will ever get a promotion; Zero stays quiet on this subject. Soon enough, the first guests have arrived. Mrs. Zero notices “red ink” on Zero’s collar, and asks him to go change. The guests are all dressed similarly to Mr. and Mrs. Zero, but in different color schemes.
The guests quickly form groups based on their gender, with the men forming a circle of chairs in one corner of the room while the women huddle in another, all gossiping about one another over topics such as style of dress, Three’s behavior at the movie theater, and the Sevens’ plan to divorce. The men disparage women’s suffrage, whereas the women rag on the men for being lazy. The tone becomes increasingly xenophobic before they all agree to meet in the middle for some mixed conversation. Just then, the doorbell rings again, with a policeman for Zero, who hands the policeman his bloody collar and confesses to the murder of his boss.
Scene 3 Analysis
Mrs. Zero and Zero’s lack of communication with one another is brought even more starkly into focus in Scene 3, after Zero has killed his boss. Despite such a huge event having happened, Zero still sits silent in the face of his angry wife, who berates him for being an hour late for dinner. While the audience is aware he has just committed murder, Mrs. Zero has no clue. She does not allow any openings for him to explain his delayed return from work, nor does she ask him directly herself; he also does not make any attempt to include her in his misdeeds.
Mrs. Zero is insensitive and narrow-minded, with a fixation on social climbing, which she reminds Zero of by meanly joking with him about his lack of ambition and the poor likelihood of him getting a promotion (when the audience knows he is now unemployed and likely to be facing prison time for murder). However, her guests prove that this is the norm in their community, if they are an accurate reflection of their larger society. Their impulse is to immediately form groups based on gender and throw insults back and forth across the gap without regard for feelings or for underlying truths. Their tone reaches the point of xenophobia before they are compelled to pull back and find a happy middle ground.
