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{PDF EPUB} Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut Jr Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Harrison Bergeron. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1922. He edited his high school newspaper and attended Cornell University, where he studied chemistry and wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun for about two years. Then Vonnegut joined the army, where he served with the U.S. 106th Infantry Division during World War II and earned a Purple Heart. He was taken captive and, as a prisoner of war, saw the bombing of Dresden in Germany. After the war ended, Vonnegut earned an advanced degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago and worked for the City News Bureau of Chicago, where he worked as a police reporter. He eventually left Chicago for Schenectady, New York, to work for General Electric in the public relations department. In 1951, he left his job to devote himself to writing. Vonnegut published his first short story, “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” in 1950. Numerous works of fiction followed, most of which are equal parts satire and science fiction. Some of his best-known works include The Sirens of Titan (1959), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, who has lived through the bombing of Dresden and become a time traveler. Breakfast of Champions (1973), another well-known novel, features an experimental form and the introduction of the author as a character. Vonnegut has produced many other novels as well as short story collections and plays and written essays about many subjects, including suicide. His mother killed herself when he was a young man, and Vonnegut attempted suicide himself in 1985. After the publication of Timequake (1996), Vonnegut said that he was through writing fiction. Since then, he has written essays for the magazine In These Times . He has taught at Smith College, the City College of New York, Harvard University, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A fervent liberal, Vonnegut is a lifetime member of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). Although he rarely makes explicit mention of real- world politics in his fiction, many of his works have been interpreted as oblique jabs at various governments and systems of thought. Many of Vonnegut’s columns for In These Times criticize President George W. Bush and his handling of the Iraq war. The bestselling essay collection A Man Without a Country (2005) takes on both President Bush and Senator John Kerry. Never one to shy away from controversy, Vonnegut has tackled the debate about assisted suicide in his essay collection God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (2001) and has made much-criticized comments to an Australian newspaper about the bravery of terrorists who die for their beliefs. “Harrison Bergeron” is one of Vonnegut’s most important short stories. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1961 and was later republished as part of the short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House (1968). Set in a dystopian America in 2081, it is often interpreted as a blistering critique of authoritarian governments. In its blend of satire and science fiction, “Harrison Bergeron” typifies Vonnegut’s work. The story expands on an idea first introduced, in abbreviated form, in Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titans . In 1995, the short story was made into a TV movie. Kurt Vonnegut's Short Stories Summary and Analysis of "Welcome to the Monkey House" 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. The narrator then explains the situation. 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. Like all hostesses of Ethical Suicide Parlors, Mary and Nancy are virgins, at least six feet tall, and experts in judo and karate. They are annoyed with the sheriff's news, since it implies they would be either afraid of Billy the Poet or the slightest bit interested in having sex with him. The mailman arrives with a letter addressed to Nancy. 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. Impatient, Nancy asks him again about the meal, and he chides her for her tone. It is her job to keep him engaged so that he does not leave, so she listens to his story of J. Edgar Nation, the man who invented ethical birth control in an attempt to control the sexual behavior of monkeys at the Grand Rapids Zoo. Foxy Grandpa claims he was with Nation when the latter first visited the monkey house. The telephone rings, and Nancy is called to the phone. 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. Assuming this man is Billy the Poet, Nancy is actually upset that she will not have the chance to fight him. 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. Nancy is bored, having heard this story many times before. 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. Nevertheless, he forces her to leap out the window and down into the sewers. He admits his intention to keep her prisoner until her ethical birth control pills wear off in eight hours. As they wander, Nancy keeps her eyes open for a moment to attack Billy. Eventually, they emerge from the sewer into the Kennedy Museum. 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. Realizing that the gang is comprised of ex-hostesses, she insults them and they attack her. They carry her upstairs into one of the museum bedrooms, and inject her with a truth serum that also knocks her unconscious. Before she passes out, Nancy is asked how it feels to be a virgin at age sixty-three, and she answers, "Pointless" (44). 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. In one of the yacht cabins, Billy the Poet waits with champagne, which is illegal. She insists she will have to be forcibly restrained if he is rape her. She is in fact held down, and he rapes her, though without hurting her. Afterwards, she is humiliated and hides her face under a blanket. 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. 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. 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. The bottle of birth control pills is labeled, "Welcome to the Monkey House." Analysis. "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.
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