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Much like many traditional science fiction stories, "Welcome to the Monkey House" exploits an ugly possibility born out of a recognizable human quality. Whether or not Vonnegut's use of humor heightens or detracts from that ugliness is a matter of taste, but it is certainly unique. Billy the Poet is a "nothinghead," meaning he has not been taking his ethical birth control pills, and hence enjoys sex (30). Because the world is so overpopulated, the World Government has required all citizens to take the pills - which make sex pleasureless - in order to dissuade unnecessary reproduction. The second part of the government's plan involves ethical, voluntary suicide via Suicide Parlors, where beautiful hostesses like Nancy and Mary use syringes to peacefully kill suicide volunteers. The human quality which Vonnegut exaggerates for this story is sexuality, a particularly taboo topic in 1968, when the story was first published in Playboy.
Essays for Kurt Vonnegut’s Short Stories
He admits his intention to keep her prisoner until her ethical birth control pills wear off in eight hours. This story is one of several that takes its inspiration from the problem of overpopulation. A real problem even today, overpopulation often allows Vonnegut to empower his fictional governments with excessive power. In this story, the Earth is full of 17 billion human beings, most of whom are unemployed because nearly all work can be accomplished by machines. As the narrator explains, "Practically everything was the Government. Practically everything was automated, too" (34). The implicit suggestion is that governments exploit realistic fears in order to justify their extreme control over individuals.
Two Friends and Other 19th-century American Lesbian Stories
As she suspects, it is from Billy the Poet; it contains one stanza of the lyrics to a dirty song. Nancy ignores it and attends to her client, whom she calls a "Foxy Grandpa" because he has been taking his time in the booth, unable to decide upon a last meal from the menu of the Howard Johnson's next door (33). Unlike most people, who look twenty-two thanks to anti-aging shots, Foxy Grandpa looks his age. The story "Der Arme Dolmetscher" is listed in the book's copyright notice as being included in this collection, but it was ultimately omitted, and does not appear in any edition of Welcome To The Monkey House.
About Kurt Vonnegut
In the not-so-distant future, the population of Earth has risen to 17 billion. A clandestine resistance group called the "nothingheads" has formed, whose members refuse to take the mandatory drugs. Billy then explains that she resents him for his ugliness, but that she will eventually find a mate worthy of her beauty since the nothinghead movement is growing. He contends that sex has come to equal death in their world, so that most people only witness sexual beauty at the moment of hostess-assisted suicide. When Nancy wakes up, her ethical birth control has worn off; she is a nothinghead. The women bathe her, dress her in a white nightgown, and lead her outside to the Kennedys' old yacht, now rooted in cement where the ocean used to be.
Book review: 'While Mortals Sleep' by Kurt Vonnegut - Los Angeles Times
Book review: 'While Mortals Sleep' by Kurt Vonnegut.
Posted: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Before she passes out, Nancy is asked how it feels to be a virgin at age sixty-three, and she answers, "Pointless" (44). "Welcome to the Monkey House" is a Kurt Vonnegut short story that is part of the collection of the same name. It is alluded to in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as one of Kilgore Trout's stories. Kurt Vonnegut's Short Stories study guide contains a biography of author Kurt Vonnegut, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of Vonnegut's most famous stories. The caller recites another dirty rhyme, claiming he is delivering it for a friend. Immediately after finishing the poem, he is attacked by the police; Nancy hears his defeat and arrest.
Finally, the approach to the rape scene reveals the sexist misconceptions of the time in which Vonnegut wrote this story. The narrator states unironically that Billy the Poet is attracted to Hostesses in Ethical Suicide Parlors, as if sexual assault were interchangeable with sexual attraction. When Nancy tells Billy the Poet that he makes her feel like an object rather than like a person, he answers that she can "thank the pills for that," as if sexism is only a problem due to the ethical birth control pills (41). After raping Nancy, just as he has raped all the other women in his gang, Billy is treated as the story's voice of reason. And when explaining that wives have always suffered a difficult wedding night, he seems to accept the patriarchal idea that a virginal women has little agency in her own sexuality. One member of the group, a criminal named Billy the Poet, is known to have deflowered several Ethical Suicide Parlor hostesses.
Vonnegut suggests here that fake, strict morality denies human nature, and hence cannot be tolerated. Though the story does feel dated in some ways, it remains extremely relevant considering how many forces in America - both in politics and in everyday life - continue to demean open sexuality as sinful. In fact, Vonnegut comments on the real-world nature of the problem through the name J.
Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works
These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of various short stories by Kurt Vonnegut. Also seemingly upset over the incident, Billy explains that her experience was much like the wedding night virgins would have experienced a hundred years before, in which they would have been entirely unaccustomed to the act. He argues that she might come to enjoy sex with the passage of time, and the argument resonates with Nancy, who listens quietly. The current President of the World is a Kennedy - "Ma" Kennedy - but her capital is located in the Taj Majal, and she will never be memorialized there since she is not "the real thing" (42). When Nancy sees that Billy has a gang of at least eight people, she decides not to attack him.
By forcing us to consider the absurdity of the government's position, Vonnegut leads us to consider the absurdity of other similarly moral strictures that we might encounter in everyday life. "Welcome to the Monkey House" is a perfect example of Vonnegut's signature style of comic science fiction, a style that digresses from the science fiction tradition. Whereas traditional science fiction is often noted for its seriousness, Vonnegut peppers his descriptions of a bizarre and terrifying world with absurdist humor.
For example, after describing Nancy and Mary as "at least six feet tall," the omniscient narrator notes that, "America had changed in many ways, but it had yet to adopt the metric system" (32). When Billy the Poet, disguised as the Foxy Grandpa, tells Nancy the story of J. Edgar Nation - the inventor of ethical birth control - he includes the detail that the man had eleven children himself.
The stories are often intertwined and convey the same underlying messages on human nature and mid-twentieth century society. He leaves her with a poem to read, the poem his grandfather read his bride on their wedding night. It is "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways," by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He also leaves her a bottle of birth control pills, which he tells her she can take once per month to avoid getting pregnant, but without dulling her sex drive. Suddenly, Foxy Grandpa pulls a revolver and removes his rubber mask to reveal that he is actually Billy the Poet. Though he looks twenty-two like most people, he is a foot shorter than Nancy and forty pounds lighter.
Afterward, he explains to her that the solution to the overpopulation problem lies not in encouraging suicide and taking all the pleasure out of sex, but rather in the use of birth control pills. He lets her go and leaves her a bottle of the pills, with a label reading "Welcome to the Monkey House." And yet he treats the idea of ethical birth control with the most irony here. Of course, Vonnegut and the reader know that science and morals have not historically gone hand in hand, but have rather almost always worked at odds in most debates. Secondly, Vonnegut expects us to know that sex without pleasure is quite unappealing. Through his use of irony, Vonnegut compels the reader to question whether the government's mandate is, in fact, more "unnatural and immoral" than the birth control itself (31).
He is at large and making his way to Cape Cod, targeting the parlor in Hyannis. Despite the authorities' attempts to catch him, Billy reaches the parlor and abducts hostess Nancy McLuhan at gunpoint, telling her that the numbing drugs were developed by a pharmacist who was disgusted by the sight of a monkey masturbating at the local zoo. Billy is assisted by a gang of fellow nothingheads, including some of his past victims, and he rapes Nancy after her latest dose wears off.
Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, and Carrie Nation, who fought for Prohibition. The sexual strictures in the story are criticized not only for denying human nature, but also for working against human individuality, another central theme in Vonnegut's work. Both Sheriff Crocker and Mary rush out to see what Billy the Poet looks like, and Nancy returns to Foxy Grandpa, who tells her about how ethical birth control was eventually adapted for use on humans. There was a conflict in the United Nations between scientists - some saw population control as the paramount concern, while others "understood morals" (38) and saw a danger in using sex for nothing more than pleasure. Vonnegut exaggerates this type of morality for comic effect, suggesting that the overly-moral set has an unrealistic sense of how sex affects a person.
In contrast to those good citizens who take the mandated ethical birth control, the nothingheads are described as "bombed out of their skulls with the sex madness that came from taking nothing" (33). The idea of "sex madness" is necessarily absurd, considering that sexuality is so natural. 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. Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of 25 short stories written by Kurt Vonnegut, published by Delacorte in August 1968. The stories range from wartime epics to futuristic thrillers, given with satire and Vonnegut's unique edge.
Assuming this man is Billy the Poet, Nancy is actually upset that she will not have the chance to fight him. Pete Crocker, the sheriff of Barnstable County, enters the Federal Ethical Suicide Parlor in Hyannis, Massachusetts, to warn its two hostesses - Nancy McLuhan and Mary Kraft - about Billy the Poet. Though Billy the Poet is allegedly moving in their direction, the police do not know what he looks like. Evening the playing field and oppressing natural ability allows the government complete control. The Question and Answer section for Kurt Vonnegut’s Short Stories is a greatresource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. In one of the yacht cabins, Billy the Poet waits with champagne, which is illegal.
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