Welcome to the Monkey House

“All Hostesses […] also had to hold advanced degrees in psychology and nursing. They also had to be plump and rosy, and at least six feet tall. America had changed in many ways, but it had yet to adopt the metric system.”

There are two humorous ideas in this passage. First is the idea that these women are so well educated and beautiful and yet their jobs are more like customer service and sales than what they’ve been trained for. The second is the reference to the metric system. The story indicates that the world is now one society, and yet humorously points out that, while America has stripped its citizens of the freedoms it once promised, at least this one aspect of American pride hasn’t disappeared.

“Practically everything was automated, too. Nancy and Mary and the sheriff were lucky to have jobs. Most people didn’t. The average citizen moped around home and watched television, which was the Government. Every fifteen minutes his television would urge him to vote intelligently or consume intelligently, or worship in the church of his choice, or love his fellowmen, or obey the laws—or pay a call to the nearest Ethical Suicide Parlor and find out how friendly and understanding a Hostess could be.”

This passage denotes the veneer of choice that this society offers: stay in line, stay in your house, or go out and end it all. Neither choice is appealing and both lack Personal Freedom and Autonomy, and yet 17 billion people still cling to life in this way. This quote also lays out the fundamental problems with this society that Nancy must transcend in order to earn a better life.

“‘Then look like you’re interested,’ he told her. He could get away with that sort of impudence. The thing was, he could leave any time he wanted to, right up to the moment he asked for the needle—and he had to ask for the needle. That was the law.”

This situation suggests a familiar situation where the customer is always right. In this situation, the problem arises that the customer, then, has all the power, and the person servicing the customer has little to none. In Vonnegut’s world, this inequity gives control to the person seeking suicide and yet strips power from the hostesses.

“‘We saw a monkey playing with his private parts!’

‘No!’

‘Yes! And J. Edgar Nation was so upset that he went straight home and he started developing a pill that would make the monkeys in the springtime fit things for a Christian family to see.’”

With 11 children, J. Edgar Nation likely valued family, and yet his value for sterilizing nature led to wider consequences than he could imagine. Subsequently, he created a drug that would eliminate the natural impulses of his own species, rather than curbing the impulses of another.

“The depression she felt as she hung up was glandular. Her brave body had prepared for a fight that was not to be.”

When Nancy realizes that she will not be allowed to confront Billy, she feels deflated. Her one opportunity to use her training is taken from her, and she feels powerless again, hinting at her underlying unhappiness with her role in society.

“The people who understood science said people had to quit reproducing so much, and the people who understood morals said society would collapse if people used sex for nothing but pleasure.”

This is an argument some used at during the 1950s and 1960s to denounce the use of birth control. Many religions believe that sex is a sacred act, and some assert that sex should be used solely in the effort to create children. Without that purpose, the sacred act would be contaminated.

“As Nancy was going under, the woman who had given her the shot asked her how old she was. Nancy was determined not to answer, but discovered that the drug had made her powerless not to answer. ‘Sixty-three,’ she murmured. ‘How does it feel to be a virgin at sixty-three?’ Nancy heard her own answer through a velvet fog. She was amazed by the answer, wanted to protest that it couldn’t possibly be hers. ‘Pointless,’ she’d said. Moments later, she asked the woman thickly, ‘What was in that needle?’ ‘What was in the needle, honey bunch? Why, honey bunch, they call that “truth serum.”’”

This moment in the story is when Nancy has her first awakening. She realizes that her life does not hold the purpose she thought it did. The Purpose of Humanity is thematically pulled throughout this story as Vonnegut addresses the complexities of governmental control and how this may result in less agency and a lesser sense of fulfillment.

“What awakened Nancy was a dream of mosquitoes and bees. Mosquitoes and bees were extinct. So were birds. But Nancy dreamed that millions of insects were swarming about her from the waist down. They didn’t sting. They fanned her. Nancy was a nothinghead.”

The contrast in this passage is with what the prickles the audience might feel when their legs are regaining circulation and what Nancy feels. While she might feel the prickles, the fanning indicates a more pleasant feeling, as if waking up and becoming a nothinghead is a relief.

“But they took her across the green cement, where the grass used to be, and then across the yellow cement, where the beach used to be, and then out onto the blue cement, where the harbor used to be.”

Other than the disappearance of birds, bees, and mosquitos, this is the only reference to the story about the environment. If the seas, beaches, and grass in this instance are all concrete, then nature is unlikely to exist in this society in any abundance. This fact would further negate the social authority’s assertion that life is precious.

“Nancy’s emotions and the antique furnishings of the cabin were so complex that Nancy could not at first separate Billy the Poet from his surroundings, from all the mahogany and leaded glass. And then she saw him at the far end of the cabin, with his back against the door to the forward cockpit. He was wearing purple silk pajamas with a Russian collar. They were piped in red, and writhing across Billy’s silken breast was a golden dragon. It was belching fire.”

This confusion Nancy feels, and its description, helps to disorient the reader, creating direct empathy for Nancy’s situation. Additionally, the dragon alludes to power and authority. Despite Billy’s intention of liberation, the power dynamic in this scene is clearly working against Nancy, who is physically overpowered and mentally weakened.

“‘And what about my happiness?’ This question seemed to puzzle him. ‘Nancy—that’s what this is all about.’”

In this moment, the reader sees Billy’s purpose. He is not a mindless sex fiend kidnapping women and raping them in order to become a “one-man population explosion” (37). Instead, Billy has rationalized that his actions, though brutal, have purpose.

“‘What you’ve been through, Nancy,’ he said, ‘is a typical wedding night for a strait-laced girl of a hundred years ago, when everybody was a nothinghead. The groom did without helpers, because the bride wasn’t customarily ready to kill him. Otherwise, the spirit of the occasion was much the same.’”

The humor here attempts to offset what Billy has done to Nancy. This tonal change also helps the reader to accept that Billy believes this painful ritual might be necessary for Nancy and others like her.

“‘They’re bad laws,’ said Billy. ‘If you go back through history, you’ll find that the people who have been most eager to rule, to make the laws, to enforce the laws and to tell everybody exactly how God Almighty wants things here on Earth— those people have forgiven themselves and their friends for anything and everything. But they have been absolutely disgusted and terrified by the natural sexuality of common men and women. Why this is, I do not know. That is one of the many questions I wish somebody would ask the machines. I do know this: The triumph of that sort of disgust and terror is now complete. Almost every man and woman looks and feels like something the cat dragged in. The only sexual beauty that an ordinary human being can see today is in the woman who will kill him. Sex is death. There’s a short and nasty equation for you: “Sex is death. Q. E. D.” So you see, Nancy,’ said Billy, ‘I have spent this night, and many others like it, attempting to restore a certain amount of innocent pleasure to the world, which is poorer in pleasure than it needs to be.’”

This is Billy’s longest speech in the story, and it outlines his entire purpose in doing what he does, transforming him into an anti-hero, a necessary force of destruction who brings about new growth and opportunities. His process, however, involves forced liberation via rape, contradicting his moral code.