30 pages • 1 hour read
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.Welcome to the Monkey House
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Personal Freedom and Autonomy
Content Warning: The story discusses suicide and contains depictions of rape and group violence against a single person.
Through the characters of Nancy and Billy, Vonnegut explores the definition of and power associated with free will and bodily rights. In the beginning of the story, Nancy’s idea of freedom is the power she has as a suicide hostess and the value she places in her work. She takes the required birth control pills thrice daily and outwardly displays no rebellious beliefs about the governmental control in place. This is the society she is familiar with, and one she has come to respect because it protects her and others from the alternative—being objectified and harmed by “nothingheads.” Nancy begins the story dedicated to upholding the law and fulfilling her role as a hostess.
Yet, in her job, Nancy is at the mercy of her clients and holds more of a customer service role than one of authority. The rule for the parlors is that the clients can “get away with that kind of impudence. The thing was, he could leave at any time […]. Nancy’s art, and the art of every hostess, was to see that the volunteers didn’t leave, to coax, wheedle and flatter them patiently every step of the way” (35). Therefore, everything Nancy is proud of, or that could offer her actual freedom—her degrees, her intelligence, and her martial arts skills—are reduced to her use of injections and persuasion in euthanasia. In addition to these restrictions in her freedom, Nancy is also required to be a virgin and to wear the hostess costume, which undermines her strength and overplays her sexuality, removing any choice she may have about her appearance or lifestyle.
The world at large is depicted as aimless, addicted to television, jobless, and often lining up for ethical death by suicides. Removing sexuality from society has created a domino effect of numbness and lack of autonomy. Billy’s character is a “nothinghead,” or someone who does not take the ethical birth control. He wants to destroy this current system of living because he finds it unnatural and immoral. His method of doing this is through forced liberation via rape. Billy captures Nancy and speaks to her in a derogatory manner. Then, his actions degrade her to an infantile state. When the gang removes her uniform and makeup, they also remove Nancy’s illusions of power. The rape removes her any semblance of choice. Then, after the rape, Billy’s men carry Nancy to a folding bed on the wall and “tuck” her in a blanket like a child (47). The outcome of the narrative is that, from this position of helplessness, of nothingness, Nancy has the opportunity to see that her perceptions of power and freedom have been mistaken. Rather than leading a full life with choice and promise, her life is empty and restricted. Finally, Billy and his gang leave Nancy alone, stripped bare and ready to emerge as a person with real, rather than perceived, freedom.
However, Billy’s idea of liberating suicide hostesses via rape paradoxically violates them, removing their freedom and bodily autonomy in a different way. While the narrative tries to highlight Billy’s intentions and the overall outcome post-assault, the story gives no space to the rape itself and the consequences of such violence. Billy wants to help women reclaim their sexual freedom, but in his attempt to do so, he removes their bodily autonomy and harms them. Though Vonnegut’s intent is to argue for sexual liberation, the story fails to acknowledge that the choice to abstain from sexual intercourse is equally valid in the spectrum of bodily autonomy. Vonnegut’s suggestion that abstinence is incompatible with self-determination or self-actualization undermines the very notion of sexual agency he aims to defend.
This theme also hails back to the idea of existentialism. Aside from the contradictory nature of the rape, if Nancy truly finds value in her work and society, then she has the opportunity to acknowledge this at the end. She can walk away and make the choice to go back to how she was or to live like the other people in this world. She can choose to join the revolution, or simply set herself free. This choice, however, was one previously denied to her. Billy is not telling her what she should do. Rather, he is offering her the opportunity to do what she thinks is right. She will have to live with the consequences of whatever choice she makes, so she needs to make the choice alone.
The Purpose of Humanity
Because of the mortal nature of human life, people often rely on legacy, human connection, and accomplishments for a sense of purpose. To do this, humans attempt to build immortality that will extend their survival beyond that of their mortal bodies. This can include having children, achieving noteworthy things, or both. When humans lack purpose, however, they tend to languish. To be human, therefore, denotes a willingness to endure by finding purpose.
The people in Vonnegut’s society are denied purpose. Many are also denied children. Instead, they live anesthetized lives of passive consumerism, eating, and watching television. Their lives are chemically extended, and yet they can also be chemically ended. The natural course of what it means to be human seems to be halted in Vonnegut’s story. Without natural death and without jobs and other unique avenues of expression, striving and thriving no longer define humanity, creating restlessness.
In Nancy’s case, she cannot have children and also keep her job. She and the other suicide hostesses, however, do not seem interested in sex or children or anything outside of going to work every day. She has more purpose than most citizens, but she also has more outrage and anger than others, too. Nancy is angry about the boredom in her job, about the idea that someone might try to victimize her, and then about the actual victimization. She is angry after Billy rapes her, which shows that she is willing to struggle to survive. At the beginning of the story, Pete says that Billy tails his victims for a while before kidnapping them. What Billy likely saw in Nancy when he followed her was a life unfulfilled, a human seeking purpose. Billy would see that she would be more likely to make a change when offered it. At the end, when Billy offers her the poem and the pills, Nancy’s humanity will allow her to make the best choice for her happiness. A sense of purpose is therefore associated with vitality and freedom, and through Billy’s revolution, he believes that he can resurrect a sense of purpose in society.
The Ethics of Medically Assisted Suicide
Vonnegut’s story addresses the controversial topic of human euthanasia, something that contradicts many people’s view of the sanctity of life but that offers a safe alternative for individuals suffering from physical or mental ailments. In this story, the option is placed within an extreme version of society where the population has grown too much and the purpose of life has waned because of government control.
For a society that claims to value life by outlawing procreative birth control and providing life-extending medications, the future explored in Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House” does not offer lives of substance to its citizens and actually encourages death over life. The narration describes the effects of ethical birth control: “Most men said their bottom halves felt like cold iron or balsawood. Most women said their bottom halves felt like wet cotton or stale ginger ale” (31). Not only can men and women not feel sexual pleasure, but they cannot feel anything at all. In this society, there is no need to desire because everything is already provided. Since the machines run most everything, and very few people have a job, it seems likely that people have places to live and food to eat without having to work for it. Thus, the government in this story has created a society required to live without really living. Each citizen’s joys are what the government can control and use to keep the social machine running and no more. Thus, each person’s value for life is diminished.
Euthanasia is therefore provided and encouraged, which inherently contradicts the social value of life. An act of suicide generally requires a profound form of despair. This is likely why the suicide hosts are so well trained in psychology—they would need to encourage anyone who came into their parlors to follow through on the act because it goes against human nature and the value most humans have for life. This is a dark concept masked by the doll-like hostesses and welcoming environment. The government notably encourages individuals to “visit” the suicide parlors, lightening the concept of death to a simple day-trip activity.
This tone and setting creates an ethical conflict for the reader, who must not only grapple with a dystopian society with extensive government control, but also the controversial issues associated with medically assisted suicide. Some of these include the best way to retain meaning in life in this environment and at what point widely accessible euthanasia is morally acceptable to the reader. This jarring aspect of the story establishes just how far removed Vonnegut’s society has become from the reader’s reality and emphasizes the extreme, negative consequences that could result from removing an individual’s sexuality and bodily autonomy.
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