Ehrenburg, a top Soviet propagandist, captures not only how man becomes an extension of the machine on the line, but how each and every person involved in the process--from worker to car owner to the head of Citroen himself--is a slave to the machine of capitalism. Ehrenburg's characters make choices. In the context of very commercial modern America today, Ehrenburg's characters seem to be leading unexamined lives, and thus their choices, as much as the system, leads to their unhappiness.