Welcome to the Monkey House
Sarah Gerovac
In terms of talented satirical and absurdist fiction writers, Kurt Vonnegut has stood out as one of the greatest for many decades. Hamilton’s “Novel Idea” book club recently finished reading his collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House. Although its fame isn’t as developed as that of his works like Slaughterhouse-Five, this collection is an interesting and relevant portrayal of Vonnegut’s talent in writing. Each tale combines elements of real society and absurd fantasy to create tales of suicide parlors, games of chess with human pieces, and the transcending of human consciousnesses into various physicalities. With every tale, readers are reminded not only of the potential pitfalls of the makeup of our own societies and cultures, but also, in a nuanced sense that allows it to lose the cliche with which it is restated here, of the place of humanity itself and its following unimportance among the rest of the universe.
Hamilton’s book club was intrigued by many of the 25 short stories published in this collection, and one that continuously reappeared among discussion of favorites was “All the King’s Horses,” which is centered around an American colonel who is captured, along with his family, by Communist forces during the Cold War. He is forced to play a sadistic game of chess in which any pieces he loses are his own soldiers and family members that he is sentencing to death. Member Madison Versh stated, “My favorite short story was the chess piece one… I liked the satirical elements he had in it… he made peoples’ lives inanimate objects in a sense and that was different.” Sydney Vande Hei felt similarly about this piece being a favorite, stating, “I really liked the one with the chess pieces… it was cool to think about it even if it wasn’t real… I like that one the most.” Certainly, this piece is an interesting and popular one among the book club members, and it is certainly one that I would recommend.
Among other favorite pieces were “Harrison Bergeron” and “Welcome to the Monkey House,” the name of the entire collection. “Harrison Bergeron” provides a take of a dystopian society in which the Constitution has been amended hundreds of times with the ultimate goal of creating a society that is entirely “equal.” If a citizen is beautiful, they must wear a mask; if they are intelligent, they must wear a mechanism that disrupts their thoughts; if they are strong, they must carry around heavy weights. Instead of celebrating individual strengths, this society brings everyone down to the level of its worst beings in a design that handicaps any potential for human progression in its attempt to handicap its citizens. Ms. Gorski, the book club’s advisor, noted, “Some of them are kind of satire about the government… ‘Harrison Bergeron’ was my favorite one… I like how it starts out with equality for everyone and has gone to the extreme where everyone looks the same.” Where “Harrison Bergeron” explores one version of a dystopia, “Welcome to the Monkey House” explores another.
Throughout history, ideas of sexual purity and oppression of sexuality have been hallmarks of many dystopian societies that appear in literature. In “Welcome to the Monkey House,” the government runs “suicide parlors,” where middle-aged men are encouraged to kill themselves in a twisted version of population control. From the virgin hostesses of these parlors to the drugs that citizens take to numb their bodies from the waist down, this story is wrought with themes of sexual repression and the dangers of it in society. On this tale, Brooke Tlachac explained, “I think for me personally, the ‘Welcome to the Monkey House’ was one of the ones that stood out to me the most and I could connect it to a lot of the dystopian societies I’ve read.” As we discussed the importance of having used this particular tale in the title of the collection, she questioned, “I wonder what the significance is in that one story that would sum up everything else and that would be the title of the entire work.”
Ultimately, these tales provide takes on society in a straightforward but fascinating style that is uniquely Vonnegut. The book club certainly enjoyed experimenting with a new genre, and if you have any interest in science fiction, dystopias, or satirical pieces, I certainly recommend any of Vonnegut’s novels; Slaughterhouse-Five is always a classic and Breakfast of Champions is another that I personally enjoy. And of course, if you’re interested in some entertaining short stories, “A Novel Idea” certainly recommends Welcome to the Monkey House.
