Welcome to the Monkey House

“Welcome to the Monkey House” is a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut that was originally published in Playboy Magazine in 1968. It was republished in a short story collection entitled Welcome to the Monkey House that same year. Set in a not-too-distant dystopian future, Vonnegut uses science fiction to darkly satirize the moral restrictions on birth control in 1968. The characters of Nancy McLuhan, a suicide hostess responsible for administering lethal injections, and Billy the Poet, a political rebel, contrast to explore the themes of Personal Freedom and Autonomy, The Purpose of Humanity, and The Ethics of Medically Assisted Suicide. Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most widely read and celebrated science fiction authors, and his works, published between 1950 and his death in 2005, are considered by many to be modern classics. His use of humor and speculative genres to comment on social and political issues are a trademark of his style.

This guide refers to the e-book edition of Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works, published by Random House in 2007 with a preface by Vonnegut.

Content Warning: The story discusses suicide and contains depictions of rape and group violence against a single person.

The story takes place in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and is written in a third-person omniscient point of view, focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on Nancy McLuhan’s perspective. Pete Crocker, a police officer, is setting up a sting to catch Billy the Poet, a political rebel. The opening narration explains that Earth’s population is an unsustainable 17 billion. The government has provided two solutions. The first is providing citizens with mandatory “ethical birth control” (31), which does not affect procreation but, rather, eliminates the lower body’s physical sensations, reducing the pleasure of sexual intercourse and the ability to become sexually aroused by physical stimulation. The second is public access to suicide parlors, where citizens can go to end their lives. Nancy and her coworker, Mary Kraft, work at a “suicide parlor” as “suicide hostesses” and are asked to cooperate with Pete, as Billy the Poet is targeting suicide parlors, kidnapping hostesses, raping them, and then releasing them. Each targeted hostess provided a different description of Billy, which allowed Billy to avoid capture thus far. Pete informs the hostesses that Billy is a “nothinghead” (31), which is a person who has stopped taking birth control and so can feel normal physical sensations from the waist down.

The hostesses are described as tall, intelligent, and physically capable women with “advanced degrees” (32) who wear seductive clothing and makeup. However, despite their sexualized appearance, hostesses take the ethical birth control pill, and thus have no interest in sex, and are required to be virgins. As Pete explains the police operations to the hostesses, Nancy becomes angry and demands greater transparency from Pete, whom she feels is withholding critical information because of their gender. Nancy assumes that Billy is targeting their parlor, and she assures Pete that she and Mary can take care of themselves and are not easily frightened.

The only other person in the parlor is a character called Foxy Grandpa, which is the name the hostesses generally give to kindly old men, who are rare due to available anti-aging medications. As Nancy complains to Pete and Mary that the man is taking too long to choose his last meal, she receives a letter from Billy containing the lyrics to a vulgar song by an old-timey singer Benny Bell, entitled “Humoresque (Passengers Will Please Refrain).” In the song, a couple is strolling through a park, groping the statues.

When Nancy enters the suicide booth to attend to her patron, the Foxy Grandpa is studying the menu. The narration recounts that occupations are rare in this time because almost everything is now automated by machines. Suicide hostesses and police officers are some of the few careers available. Subsequently, most citizens spend their time in their homes watching television. All entertainment is controlled by the government, as are the churches. Advertisements encourage civic responsibility, advising citizens to vote, spend wisely, practice moral strengthening, follow the rules, and visit the local suicide parlors.

While still thinking of the note and Billy, Nancy impatiently asks the Foxy Grandpa if he has chosen his last meal. He chastises her for being unkind to him, which forces Nancy to change her behavior since coaxing a client to consent to suicide is a large part of her job. Feeling guilty, Nancy agrees to hear his story about how ethical birth control was invented. The Foxy Grandpa tells a story Nancy has heard before about a pharmacist named J. Edgar Nation, who did not like to see monkeys masturbating at the zoo, as it was improper for his Christian children to see. The other scientists saw a need for population control, but moralists believed that if sex was only about physical gratification rather than procreation, then “society would collapse” (38). Nation’s monkey solution—curbing sexual feelings altogether—became the human solution. After the Foxy Grandpa finishes his story, Nancy takes a phone call that Pete believes is from Billy. The police trace the call, and Pete leaves to capture Billy, taking along Mary, who is excited to see Billy arrested. They leave Nancy alone in the parlor. On their way out, Pete drops a handful of papers, which Mary hands to Nancy. These papers include Billy’s poems to the suicide hostesses. The one Nancy reads mentions how ethical birth control pills turn the user’s urine blue.

After they leave, the Foxy Grandpa emerges from the booth. After a conversation about the meaninglessness of each death in a suicide parlor, the man takes off his prosthetic mask, revealing himself to be Billy the Poet. Nancy fantasizes about fighting him, but he has a gun, and he orders her out of the parlor. They go through the sewer, have a brief conversation about her sexuality and sensuality, and then enter the Kennedy Museum, which depicts life before the population exploded. The museum includes a replica of the current president’s office and her administration’s propaganda.

When Nancy enters the museum, she meets Billy’s “gang” (42), which consists of nothinghead men and women wearing stockings over their faces. Nancy realizes that all the women are also suicide hostesses. Nancy believes they must all be taking drugs or alcohol to be acting this way. When Nancy attempts to stand up to the gang, they physically brutalize her to keep her in line. The gang breaks into a replica of a servant’s room in the museum, where the women give Nancy a shot. Nancy believes it will merely sedate her, but it is also a “truth serum” (44). Under compulsion, Nancy reveals that she is 63 years old and that being “a virgin” at that age is “pointless” (44). Then, she falls asleep. Once Nancy’s ethical birth control pills wear off, the women bathe her, dress her in a “white night gown” (45), and lead her to a boat where Billy waits, reading. She walks down into Billy’s cabin but tells him she will go no further, and he must call his lackeys to hold her down, “which he did” (46).

Billy rapes Nancy. Billy doesn’t seem to enjoy it, and Nancy is devastated. Billy goes back to reading, and Nancy is placed on a bed and covered in a “war-surplus blanket” (46). Billy lights a cigar but demonstrates that he doesn’t smoke them often because he has a coughing fit. Nancy gains strength from her anger and Billy’s calmness, and she confronts him about his behavior and the nothinghead hostesses who help him. Billy responds calmly and explains the similar circumstances of a wedding night in past times. Billy tells her that she will someday meet a man who will deserve her, and she will need to be free when that happens. She tells him that his plan will lead to more overpopulation, and he tells her this does not need to be the case. Billy disparages the laws that are formed from religious morality rather than common sense, which deny “the natural sexuality of common men and women” (49). Billy explains that modern morality equates sex with death, which goes against human nature.

Billy tells Nancy that his grandfather read his grandmother a love poem on their wedding night, and he offers to read it to Nancy, but she strongly declines. He reads the first stanza of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet, “How Do I Love Thee?” to her, places a bottle of modern birth control on the book, tells her what it is for, and leaves.