Theme, Irony, and Point of View

The theme of this piece is that human intuition supersedes machinery no matter what. The fact that none of the characters completely trusted the machine enabled them to win the war. The title itself is meant to be a little bit ironic. The fact that it was called "The Machine That Won the War" implies that it was not in fact, the machine that won the war. Each of the characters admitted their wariness with the accuracy of the machine, thereby creating a sort of flow throughout the novel. The choice of vocabulary is complex, but not too hard to follow. Irony in this story is mostly verbal due to the fact that the point of view in the story was third person. However, the reader was not given insight into any of the characters' thoughts, unless they explicitly speak their thoughts. The verbal irony occurs when each of the characters admits to their part in tampering with the data.