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The history shows that in the capitalist society during that time, the oppression of the workers is heavy and the life of them is hard. The dehumanization of their characters is not a surprising result. In the play, the author exposes and criticizes, with numbers as his best weapon. His whimsy shows in the different use of numbers, as the characters’ names, or as the symbol of the meaningless work. In either way, the loss of personality is fully expressed in these subtle details.
2.2 The Loss of Interpersonal Connections—the Court
Elmer Rice was a law school graduate, and became a law office clerk for a short time, so his work often incorporated legal themes. His plays provide provocative commentaries about the law and raise dilemmas about justice and ethics that resonate today. (Randolph N. Jonakait, 2007:401) The Adding Machine includes a highly stylized trial in scene IV. In such an expressionistic play, the trial is not intended to be realistic but just another manifestation of the dehumanizing life of Mr. Zero. (Randolph N. Jonakait, 2007:412)
The jurors are Mr. Zero’s friends—the Ones to the Sixes, who just took part in the party in his house. But now, as Zero stands there looking at the jury, “[t]he jurors give no sign of having seen him.” “Throughout they sit with folded arms, staring stolidly before them.”(Elmer Rice, 1965:21) It is a shocking and pathetic scene in that people no longer have feelings even to their beloved ones. There is nothing left in the society except for work, money and uniformity, which is the corollary of the inversion of the people and the machine. The worship of technology in modern culture is intimately related to the attraction to the non-living at the expense of the living. Just as the final choice of Mr. Zero—to the machine rather than remaining in the Elysian Fields. He embraces the machine as if in love with it, necrophilously redirecting his passions toward a dead object rather than living human beings.(Charles Thorpe, 2009:278)
Similarly, there are not many social connections between the jurors and Mr. Zero. They do not care about the suspect, the result, or the justice of the society. So does the court. After Mr. Zero’s sincere personal statement which fails to arouse the least interest of the jury, the jurors rise as one and shout in unison:”Guilty!” They then “right-face in their places and file quickly out of the jury box and toward the door in a double column.” (Elmer Rice, 1965:25) They act as if the trial is an annoying task they want to finish soon, instead of a serious duty which may decide someone’s fate. Here expresses Rice’s opinion that the law is impersonal, even indifferent, toward those it judges, which was gained from his time as a clerk in a law office.
Though he does not become a lawyer in the end, Elmer Rice has quite a little legal experience. He graduated from New York Law School and passed the bar examination with high scores. He also practiced as a filing clerk in a well-known law firm for several years. From this experience, he sees the distance between dream and reality. In theory, he believes that the spirit of the law, not the letter, should be paramount. “Yet in practice I saw it used for the avoidance of debt by shady bankruptcy proceedings, the collection of damages by trickery and coercion, the breach of contractual obligations by dubious technicalities, the manipulation of porces by cynical collusion.”(Randolph N. Jonakait, 2007:409) Rice understands all that, for he knows that the lawyer’s prime duty is to his client, but he feels that he cannot adopt that attitude.
Hence, he quitted because of the disillusion of law. Yet what happened in court did interest him and his life in various ways interested with courtrooms. For example, during his many travels, he visited foreign courtrooms and attended trials. And throughout his career from his first produced play, Rice recurrently used the courtroom in many of his plays.