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30 pages 1 hour read

Elmer Rice

The Adding Machine

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1929

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Scene 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Scene 4 Summary

This scene begins in a court of justice. There is a jury made up of One through Six and their wives; two officers; and Zero, who is asked to stand before the jury. He begins a sensible monologue of complaint against his lawyers, but quickly devolves into adding up figures aloud, throwing in frustrations and complaints as he goes. The reason he gives for the murder is that his boss wouldn’t stop talking, but he appears to regret it now that he has found out how good and charitable his boss was, and that his boss was a family man. He begins to confess to other violent offenses, including a section using the n-word to confess he would have liked to take part in a lynching in Georgia. When he suggests the jurors would have done the same, they immediately find him guilty and file out from their box as he protests the sentence.

Scene 4 Analysis

This is an unusual court of law, made up of a jury of Zero’s peers–the very same group from his dinner party, in fact. Zero has already confessed to the murder, but begins a