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 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Scene 8 Summary
This scene begins in an office, much like the one pictured in Scene 2. There is the clicking of an adding machine, and Zero can be seen seated and absorbed in his task. He is accompanied by two men: Lieutenant Charles and Joe. Charles attempts to get Zero to stop adding, but he cannot–the men must work to pry Zero from the machine. Zero reveals he has been working this adding machine for 25 years, but he must stop, because Charles says he is “going back”–in other words, his soul is being recycled, or sent back to Earth.
Charles informs him that every soul is used over and over again until it is worn out, and his has been through at least 50,000 rounds. What’s more, while a few souls are allowed to remember, some get better every time, but most just get worse–like Zero has. Again, Zero expresses preference for staying how and where he is. As with all souls, Zero will return him as a baby, wiped of memories, this time to do a new kind of adding down in a mine where all he must do is make a slight movement with his right toe. Charles offers to send a woman down to keep him company. Charles then uses ventriloquism to convince Zero, who runs off chasing the female voice Charles produces. When Joe laughs, he is reprimanded by Charles. The play ends with Charles complaining about his own job.
Scene 8 Analysis
In this final scene, Zero has come full circle. Here, in the afterlife office, he is being permitted to fulfill his most basic desire to perform rote, repetitive work with little compensation or interaction, to the point that when Charles arrives, Zero must be pried from his seat and forced to move along. The religious and philosophical implications at work in this play are fascinating, as Zero is consistently and vehemently being found resistant to change, whether alive or dead.
The play’s take on the afterlife is unfamiliar in much of Christian or Western tradition. In fact, it would appear to have more to do with reincarnation and the concept that one soul goes through many lives, a concept most frequently associated with religions such as Buddhism and Hindu, although here, the concept has been placed conspicuously in a framework that is skewed toward Christian and Western concepts of morality and work ethic.
