When was welcome to the monkey house written

Apr 08, ISBN Add to Cart. Buy from Other Retailers:. Paperback —. Also by Kurt Vonnegut. Product Details. Inspired by Your Browsing History. The Island of Dr. The Invisible Man. To Build a Fire and Other Stories. Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories. Algernon Blackwood. Journey to the Center of the Earth. John L. Flynn and H. The Time Machine.

Edgar Allan Poe. The Turn of the Screw. The Mysterious Island. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 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 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" 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" 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.

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