Welcome to the Monkey House (short story)

"Welcome to the Monkey House"
Author	Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science Fiction
Published in	Welcome to the Monkey House
Publication type	Anthology
Publisher	Delacorte Press (AKA Dell Publishing)
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Publication date	1968

"Welcome to the Monkey House" is a Kurt Vonnegut short story that is part of the collection Welcome to the Monkey House. It is alluded to in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as one of Kilgore Trout's stories.

Plot summary

In the not-so-distant future, a criminal mastermind named Billy the Poet is on the loose and on his way to Cape Cod. His goal is to deflower one of the hostesses at the Ethical Suicide Parlor in Hyannis. The world government runs the parlors and urges people to commit suicide to help keep the population of 17 billion stable. It also requires that the hostesses at these establishments be virgins on the basis that this would make the idea of suicide more appealing, especially to middle-aged men and older. The government also suppresses the population’s sexual desire with a drug that numbs them from the waist down (but does not render them infertile, as that is seen as unethical and violative of the religious principles of many). This drug is called "Ethical Birth Control", and was originally developed by a druggist who had been offended when on a family outing to the zoo the group were confronted by the sight of a male monkey masturbating. Billy is a member of a sureptitious group called the "Nothingheads", people who refuse to take the government-required drugs. Despite a sting by the authorities, Billy the Poet outwits them and kidnaps a six-foot blonde suicide parlor hostess, Nancy McLuhan. McLuhan vows to fight Billy to the very end, but the drugs wear off, and when she is raped by Billy, her mind opens as well. Billy convinces her that sex and death aren’t the answer – birth control pills are. In the end, Billy lets Nancy go, but she is forever a changed woman and apparently a convert to Nothingheadism. Billy sends her a note attached to a bottle of birth control pills which says simply, "Welcome to the Monkey House".

Main characters

Nancy McLuhan:

Nancy McLuhan is a Hostess working at the Federal Ethical Suicide Parlor of Hyannis. She unites all the skills and virtues a Suicide Hostess has to fulfill: she is a virgin and convinced of the correctness the laws of the Government. She is an expert in Judo and Karate and holds advanced degrees in psychology and nursing. Furthermore she is plump, rosy and six feet tall and wears the typical Hostess’s uniform which contains heavy makeup, purple stockings and black boots. She looks 22 years old although she is already 63. This is due to the anti-aging shots people get twice a year. Nancy has adapted the conventions the Government put on the society but there is still a side in her which recognizes that this way of living is not quite right. When Billy the Poet’s helpers make her drink a truth serum and ask her what it feels like to be a virgin at sixty-three she answers, “Pointless” . Peter J. Reed suggests that “being an overgrown Barbie doll administering ethical suicide might well seem pointless. But the passage implies that her still being a virgin causes her to feel pointless, purpose evidently residing in her being a wife and mother”.^[1]

Billy the Poet:

Billy the Poet is a so-called nothinghead who refuses to take the ethical birth control pills and tries to seduce Ethical Suicide Parlor Hostesses. He does so for his own ideology. He agrees with the World Government that overpopulation is a threat to the stability of the world but he thinks that human instincts such as sexuality must not be suppressed. He therefore hands birth control pills to the Hostesses which prevent reproduction but do not interfere with sexuality. Billy is not a strong alpha-male hero. He is not physically attractive and does not seek for power. He intends to bring an innocent pleasure back into the world and tries to express his tenderness by leaving Nancy a book of poetry containing Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”. That was the poem his grandfather had read out to his grandmother on their wedding night. He does not see his actions as actual violations towards the Hostesses. He explains to Nancy that what she went through with him was pretty much the same thing a lot of brides had experienced a hundred years ago on their wedding night. He claims that a lot of them have afterwards become sexual enthusiasts. He wants all the people in the world to have this opportunity. His mission is quite successful; when he brings Nancy to the Kennedy Compound, there is already a group of his supporters waiting for them; members of his nothinghead underground culture.

J. Edgar Nation:

The title of the story which is also the inscription on the label of Billy’s birth control pills refers to the history of how the numbing pills have been developed. The druggist J. Edgar Nation had taken his family to the zoo on the Easter Sunday. When they passed by the monkey house a monkey was playing with his genitals. Finding that this immoral behavior destroyed the spirit of Easter, Nation decided to invent the numbing pills for animals. Later on, when people stayed young and attractive on the long term due to the invention of the anti-aging shots, the pills were also imposed on humans. J. Edgar Nation’s name is a mixture made up by Vonnegut which derives from J. Edgar Hoover and Carrie Nation. Hoover, at that time the FBI director, “was vigorous in his moral judgments”^[2] and Nation fought alcohol. Carrie Nation’s message is also present in the story, as Nancy is convinced that alcohol, or more precisely Gin, is the worst drug of all.

Motifs and critique

The crucial motif in that story is sexuality. The story was originally published in Playboy in January 1968 and some of the aspects discussed seem to be written right for this very readership . The sexual tension through the story is intense and a good counterpoint to a society which wants to suppress human instincts such as sexuality. Written in 1968 at the peak of the sexual revolution during the so-called Sexy Sixties, the story was highly topical at that time.^[3] It was also that year when Pope Paul VI published an encyclical detailing the new official Catholic position against birth control pills and artificial contraception. “Welcome to the Monkey House” is Vonnegut’s critical answer to these actions. He suggests that fake morals driven to the point of wanting to deny human nature cannot be tolerated.

In the case of “Welcome to the Monkey House” this fake moralism is imposed by a World Government. Vonnegut often discussed the dangers of egalitarianism but not to the extent that one single system forms and controls all the people in the world. Everything has been made equal; from the fact that all Suicide Parlors have purple roofs and the ever-adjacent Howard Johnson's diners orange ones, to the egalitarian TV programs, people’s young looks and the fact that no one has sex. Equality endangers individuality; Vonnegut has “consistently decried the self-righteousness that imposes controls on the individual human rights of others”^[4] His arguments are even more harshly presented in another short story of his, “Harrison Bergeron” (1965), where the Americans are controlled by a Government that wants to equalize people physically and mentally by handicapping them.

Another problem Vonnegut discusses in “Welcome to the Monkey House” is the overpopulation of the world. In the story 17 billion human beings live on planet earth. This leads to the fact that most of the people are unemployed. They sit at home watching television programs which are controlled by the Government. These programs aim to enforce the Government’s power by showing advertisements and shows which propagate the laws and rulers and also the principles of Ethical Suicide. Almost all the work is done by machines. Even in the restaurant (Howard Johnson’s) which is next to all Suicide Parlors all the work is done by a machine. To make people feel more comfortable eating there, since some found the silence resulting from the lack of a human staff to be intimidating, a record produces regular restaurant-noise. Furthermore most species of animals and plants in the world are extinct such as bees, birds or mosquitoes because they had to step back from growing mankind. The measures the Government develops to prevent further growth of population are drastic: The rulers encourage ethical suicide and prevent reproduction by numbing people’s lower part of the body. Vonnegut mentions overpopulation not only in “Welcome to the Monkey House” but also in another story of the same collection “The Big Trip Up Yonder/ Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” (1954) where he describes how in the Year 2158 six generations of a family live together in just one small apartment. Some of the ideas are also present in Vonnegut's story 2 B R 0 2 B. He wants to draw his reader’s attention to the threat of overpopulation in order to avoid the scenarios which are described in his stories.

Style

Reading the story it can be recognized to which extent Vonnegut is influenced by his early work as a journalist. His sentences are rather short and easy to read in order to be reached and to be understood by as many people as possible.^[5] The dystopian, science fictional setting is perfect to underline his social and political critique. Vonnegut is able to give a futuristic preview of what could become of the world if people will not change. Despite the rather drastic plot Vonnegut still intends the story to be funny. There are a lot of humoristic elements to be found: J. Edgar Nation and his being offended by a monkey, the "president of the world", Ma Kennedy, who has a “THIMK” sign in her office, people who take the pill having blue urine or the Kennedy Compound as a museum. The entertaining ironical hints draw more attention to the fine details of the story. Vonnegut uses humor, at times very black humor, to transport his serious message.

Publication history

First published in January, 1968 in Playboy magazine.
Published in August, 1968 in the collection Welcome to the Monkey House by Delacorte Press.
Re-released on September 8, 1998 in the re-publication of Welcome to the Monkey House by Dial Press.

Adaptations

Showtime presented Kurt Vonnegut's Monkey House with an adaptation of this story in 1991.

References

↑ [Reed, Peter J. (1997): The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut. Westport, London: Greenwood Press. p.99]
↑ [Reed, Peter J. (1997): The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut. Westport, London: Greenwood Press. p.101]
↑ [Pinternagel, Stefan T. (2005): Kurt Vonnegut jr. und die Science Fiction. Kilgore Trout, Trafaldamore and Bokononismus. Berlin: Shayol.p.38]
↑ [Reed, Peter J. (1997): The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut. Westport, London: Greenwood Press. p.99]
↑ [Allen, William Rodney (1991): Understanding Kurt Vonnegut. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.p.3]

External links

The short story is here