The Adding Machine

Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine is a play originally published in 1923. The play centers around the life, death, and afterlife of a man named Zero. He and his wife live in a society dominated by reverence for financial gain and opportunism, with an emphasis on morality and rigid determinations of what is right and wrong. Mr. and Mrs. Zero come in fairly low on this social hierarchy, and while Zero is content in his position, his wife is more ambitious. The day after she successfully plants a seed of ambition in her husband, Zero is fired from his monotonous accounting job. Having come in for the day hoping to ask for a raise for his consistent work over the past twenty-five years, Zero’s spirits are crushed when his boss tells him he is being replaced by an adding machine.

At home that night, Zero is late for his own party, where Mrs. Zero has invited the neighbours over. The women form one group while the men huddle together in another, both groups gossiping and revealing stories about the others, doing nothing productive. Just as they are beginning to encourage one another to mix, a police officer arrives for Zero, who confesses immediately to having murdered his boss before coming home that evening. In a court of law, Zero’s former dinner party-goers have become jurors in his trial. He begins his confession sensibly but ends up quite hysterical, and is sentenced to death.

Zero is locked up in a cage and treated like an exhibit in a museum or a zoo. Just before his execution, while he is eating a final meal of ham and eggs, Mrs. Zero comes to visit him. She has brought him more eggs and ham, which he eats with gusto. They discuss practical issues like finances. Zero expresses his interest in passing a scrapbook full of all the times he’s been mentioned in the paper on to Miss Devore, leading to a fight with Mrs. Zero. The Fixer arrives to lecture him on his mortality, then calls in the guards for his execution. Zero wakes up underground in a graveyard after a young couple has been standing on his grave. He pulls himself out of the ground only to meet Shrdlu, a forlorn ghost who murdered his own mother before being put to death. He is remorseful and religious, and hopes to be punished in the afterlife for his sinful behavior. 

Some time has passed when we find Zero wandering in a beautiful meadow. Zero is surprised to find Shrdlu here, but happy for the company. The other man is still glum, as no one has yet bothered to punish him for his deeds on Earth. He helps Zero get his bearings, telling him about the Elysian Fields and its inhabitants. Zero feels comfortable, making some attempts to relax. Before long, he hears a woman’s voice, and they are joined by Miss Devore, who killed herself after hearing Zero had been sentenced to death. Alone in the fields, they confess to having harbored feelings for one another on Earth, and share a kiss. However, while Zero wants to move on and find a sense of purpose, Daisy is happy relaxing in the fields. Zero abandons her and Shrdlu in search of work, while Daisy mourns the life they could have had together. In the final scene of the play, Zero believes he has found his place in the afterlife in an office resembling his office at home, where he has been working yet again as an accountant for the past twenty years. He is visited by a man named Lieutenant Charles, who informs him he will be going back to Earth with no memories of his time in the afterlife: his soul will be recycled. Zero is resistant, wanting to stick with his current occupation, but he is tempted away from his desk by the promise of a beautiful woman to distract him and keep him company.