Player Piano In Player Piano, everything is controlled by machines and computers and depends on productivity. The managers and engineers only create new programs for more productive production. Even the rates of production and consumption are calculated by a computer (EPICAC), which is seated in the large Carlsbad cavern system. The EPICAC computer even determines the people's careers and in this way their whole lives. It gives intelligence tests to everyone, and on the basis of their results it sorts people into two categories - suitable for university entering exams and suitable for 'work'. The university studies allow their graduates to become managers, engineers, writers or public relation workers. You may become a writer only if you get a university degree, the literature is heavily censored and you may write only "suitable" facts and create stories about authorized settings. Ordinary people were degraded into a role of passive consumers. They do not have to work anymore; the only really working jobs are either supervisors in industry or agriculture, or reconstruction and restoration groups, or soldiers. But supervisors do not have any work; reconstruction and restoration workers are too numerous to work really; and soldiers are bullied cruelly. The majority of population is bored since they have everything they need, all their homework is done by automatons and machines, and their only job is entertainment. Dr Paul Proteus lives in the city of Ilium, N.Y. The city is divided into three major parts: the managers and engineers are in the northwest, in the northeast there is a large industrial plant, quite a large city by itself, and in the south across the river there is the town for ordinary people, who are the rough... ... middle of paper ... ...nd destroy machinery in general. They do not really care about which machine is really bad and which might be helpful or needful, they do not distinguish, so they just smash all down. The army makes a counterstrike, so the revolution is finished soon by violence. Paul does not belong anywhere now. The revolutionaries blame him for the bad success the industrial bosses treat him like a traitor and his own wife who said she loved him divorces him and marries his career-enemy. All his life is beaten, he has nothing, and his university degree is taken from him so that now he has no qualification. The government leads a trial against him that is broadcast by the television, and they turn all the facts upside down and inside out so that Paul looks like the worst and meanest. So that any revolution looks like a complete nonsense, and so that the present system is the best.
In my opinion Paul is saying that the diseases were nobody's fault and could have been avoided, but war, in comparison, could have been avoided and is mans fault. War in the end does kill Paul, but not before his closest friends are killed. Katczinsky is hit by shrapnel and is horrifically described by the author here: "Kat got a splinter of shrapnel in his head on the way. The war has ripped apart Paul's life, and now his closest friend is dead. The final chapter describes Paul's last days and how he is resigned to dying.
Gordon Wood gives an interesting insight into the Revolution. Overall, I find Wood’s argument to be persuasive and refreshing. There is little doubt that the forces that Wood proclaims as significant in his history of the Revolution are important. However, it is this same concentration on non-traditional forces that leads to my criticism of his book.
In the play “The Piano Lesson”, August Wilson utilizes two main characters Boy Willie and Berniece to present the theme of gender roles and sexual politics. The reaction of the siblings toward the piano illustrates the role of a man and woman during the conflict. Throughout the entire play they argue over the piano and struggle with an underlying problem of choosing to honor their ancestors or leaving the family’s history in the past. Boy Willie wants to show respect to his ancestors by selling the piano to continue the Charles’s family legacy. He wants to buy Sutter’s land because Sutter was a white slave master who forced his ancestors to work on the land. However, Berniece wants to keep the piano and doesn’t want to use it because of fear. The disagreement between the siblings shows the play’s representation of gender differences.
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson is taking place in Pittsburg because many Blacks travelled North to escape poverty and racial judgment in the South. This rapid mass movement in history is known as The Great migration. The migration meant African Americans are leaving behind what had always been their economic and social base in America, and having to find a new one. The main characters in this play are Berniece and Boy Willie who are siblings fighting over a piano that they value in different ways. Berniece wants to have it for sentimental reasons, while Boy Willie wants it so he can sell it and buy land. The piano teaches many lessons about the effects of separation, migration, and the reunion of
Paul believes that everyone around him is beneath him. He is convinced that he is superior to everyone else in his school and in his neighborhood. He is even condescending to his teachers, and shows an appalling amount of contempt for them, of which they are very aware.
The piano is an instrument that can be traced back through the centuries; there are no debates about that statement. Nevertheless, there are several different views on what begins the history of the piano. In his book, Pianos and their Makers, Alfred Dolge begins with the Monochord in 582 B. C., which was used by Pythagoras. However, Ernest Closson begins his History of the Piano with the clavichord and gives only five paragraphs to the influences from before. Everyone has their own interpretation of what the history of the piano is; however an instrument is just a piece of mechanical parts without the music that was played on it.
Boy Willie is the protagonist in the play The Piano Lesson, which is written by August Wilson. He is a foil character to his sister Berniece. He wants to sell the family piano. His biggest obstacle is his past, and his sister. Berniece wants to salvage the piano and keep it as a namesake. The quarrels revolving around legacies is the central conflict of the play. Boy Willie’s “Super-objective” contains two parts: fear and legacy resulting in memory.
Every person has a past, every race has a heritage, and every family has a legacy. In Wilson’s play, four protagonists, Boy Willie, Berniece, Doaker and Wining Boy are all wounded by their traumatic pasts’ and have only have one reminder of their family history – the piano. During the beginning of the play, Wilson describes the setting and illustrates a piano that is dominating the parlor and gathering dust in the Charles’ home. The piano is covered with carvings of events and “mask-like figures resembling totems.” Wilson then begins to describe the carvings as “graceful” and rendering a “power of invention that lifts them out of the realm of craftsmanship and into the realm of art.” Nevertheless, to the Charles’ family, the piano is not just an ornately carved piano but rather the only symbol of their family legacy; the only way to understand the piano is to go back to the period of slavery. In the play, Doaker begins to reveal the family history to Boy Willie and explains the significance of the piano. During the slave period, Boy Willie and Bernice’s' grandfather's (Willie Boy) was owned by a man named Robert Sutter. Sutter had traded their grandmother and uncle for the piano as a present for his wife, Miss Ophelia. After getting tired of the piano, Miss Ophelia missed her slaves so much, Sutter made Willie Boy hand-carve the faces of his wife and son's faces all over the piano. However, Willie Boy didn't end there; he carved all of his ancestors onto the piano and “all kinds of things that happened with [the] family.” Miss Ophelia became ecstatic when she saw the piano, because “now she had her piano and her niggers too.” When she looked at the carvings in the piano, she could see all the faces of the slaves she missed and the...
Paul believes that he was tricked into joining the army and fighting in the war. This makes him very bitter towards the people who lied to him. This is why he lost his respect and trust towards the society. Teachers and parents were the big catalysts for the ki...
The theater and Carnegie Hall was where Paul "really lived". To him, the rest of his life was but "a sleep and a forgetting". The moment Paul stepped into either one of those places, he felt he was in his element. He "breathed like a prisoner set free". Paul's life was so monotonous and dull in comparison to his theater life, which he felt was his "secret temple". This alone provides insight into his character. He truly believed that he belonged to the arts. This makes Paul's case so sad because no one believed in him. This is what caused him to flee to New York to be in a place where he would be accepted for his true selt.
We see it in homes, schools, restaurants, and in various other places, but not many people know the changes it had to go through to touch our hearts with the endless possibilities the piano provides. Not many people know the origins and changes the piano has gone through to get where it is today. The truth is it was invented around the year 1700 by Bartolomeo Cristofori DI Francesco. For example, not many people know that the average piano started with sixty-six keys and changed to the average eighty-eight keys. One thing is for sure, pianos have gone through some major changes since they were first made.
This report will discuss the career of prominent Italian architect, Renzo Piano. Topics discussed include: design approach, influences, building typology and the materials used, as well as a biography of Renzo.
Le Corbusier. The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987
The release of the Jane Champion's The Piano in 1993 was almost a shocking event and till today is thought to be provoking. The movie has become the focus of the intensive debates about the postcolonial New Zealand and its neocolonial present. It is about the feminine desire and institutional moderation with in the marriage. It is about the psychological complexity of the human relations and love. The issues raised in the movie remain vital in the contemporary cultural studies. They include the possibility of the alternative forms of desire and human intercourse, the impediment of the aspirations to the postcolonial citizenship that does not put into the morass of the racial and identity politics. In this essay I will discuss the above issues and how they are depicted both in the movie and real life.
Renzo Piano was born on September 14, 1937 in Genoa, Italy, into a family of builders. He graduated from the school of Architecture, Milan Polytechnic in 1964. During his studies, he often worked under the design guidance of Franco Albini, but in his spare time he would work steadily at his fathers building shop. This is where he truly developed a love for the trade. Between the years 1965 and 1970 he worked with many great architects like, Louis I. Kahn, Z. S. Makowsky and Jean Prouve, but the most influential collaboration in Piano's life was that with Richard Rogers in 1971. His collaboration with Rogers lead to many great things. One of which was the "Piano & Rogers" agency. Together Rogers and Piano designed a number of buildings in Italy and in England. Their most famous was the Pompidou Center built in 1972 in Paris, France. This building was designed to hold some of the worlds most beautiful modern art, so naturally the design had to be modern. It is constructed mostly of high-tech steel and glass, with a beautifully designed exoskeleton adding to its complexion (Renzo Piano Building Workshop Official Site). Renzo Piano has designed and brought to life so many structures all over the world. Some of his most famous include Kansai, the world's largest air terminal in Osaka Bay, Japan, where Piano proved himself a master of the gigantic project and again with the imposing Bercy Shopping Center in Paris, as well as a massive and beautiful National Science Museum in Amsterdam. His soccer stadium in Bari, Italy is like no other in the world, with its great swaths of blue sky interrupting the usual monotony of stadium seating. His versatility is displayed further in such projects as the beautiful sweep of a nearly one thousand foot long bridge that curves across Ushibuka Bay in Southern Japan, with the design of a 70,000-ton luxury ocean liner (Great Buildings On-line). In 1998 Piano was selected as the Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. This is the professions highest honor which bestows a $100,000.00 cash prize and a gold medallion. The purpose of the Pritzker Architecture Prize is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.