Book Review - Welcome to the Monkey House

Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Welcome to the Monkey House, and the titular short story
tackle an assortment of topics that are all relevant to the world we live in today.
Frequently labeled as a “science fiction” writer, Vonnegut based his futuristic studies on
trends and patterns he observed in the world round him. Themes such as over-population,
technology dependency, government control, and resource shortages all began to pop up
in his short fiction.

Looking back on his body of stories today, we see a man who wasn’t writing
Science Fiction, but a man who was merely projecting his stories into a future he was
concerned would soon exist. It seems that he was very close to the mark.
His story “Welcome to the Monkey House” was first published in Playboy, and
then collected years later in a book of the same name. While the book is filled with
interesting stories and strangely accurate predictions to life beyond the era it was
written, “Welcome to the Monkey House” is the crown jewel of the book, and stands out
as perhaps the most socially relevant in light of recent events.
With female genital mutilation still in existence, and on the rise in our own
country, one has to wonder why anyone would subject a child to something that can scar
them for the rest of their lives. Why would a person possibly seek to stifle the sexual
urges or pleasures that we were born with? Vonnegut’s story explores the same territory,
lighting the piece against his familiar dystopian background.
In this future, the world has become one society, but with aging n death
conquered, the population has exploded beyond control. Several of his stories give us
glimpses into this world, a place where five and six generations of a family live in the
same house, fighting over who gets one of the few available beds. There are no jobs
because machines do most of the work, and the few human-held positions are never
vacated because no one gets sick and no one dies.

So in this world sexuality is suppressed and suicide is encouraged, most of the
time it’s even assisted. The legend goes that a famous doctor was offended when he
witnessed monkeys copulating in the local zoo while out with his family one day, and set
out to create a pill to crush sexual desire, effectively numbing the population from the
waist down. While an absurd notion, Vonnegut has the government latch on to this idea,
and makes the pills required by law. Any who refuse to deaden their nethers are
called “nothingheads” and are sought by the law. An obvious play on the term, “heads,”
slang for drug users or hippies during the sexual revolution, the “nothingheads” are the
heroes of this story, and are led by the rebellious Billy the Poet, who kidnaps virgin
women and forces himself on them.

Is this a world we’re heading to? The power of this, and many of Vonnegut’s
stories, is in the way he crafts it. The details are specific enough to seem true, but vague
enough to apply to any similar events that could have happened in the past or be
happening now. The real controversy in the story exists in the conflicted nature of
villany. Who is the b guy? Is the government bad for crushing our sex, pleasure, and
really any notion of free choice, or is it Billy the Poet n the “nothingheads”? Are they
right for rebelling, for kidnapping women and forcing them back into the “monkey
house”?

Review by K.Z.S.