Welcome To The Monkey House Flashcards
Context
1960s America
- overpopulation
- sexual revolution
- women’s movement
- birth control controversy
Motif of birth control pills
“The pills were ethical because they didn’t interfere with a person’s ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral”
Technology - humans made redundant
“Practically everything was the government. Practically everything was automated too”
Neologism - nothinghead
“A person who refused to take his ethical birth-control pills… the penalty was”
Questions the value of sexuality
“A woman’s not a woman till the pills wear off”
Distortion of ethics
“He has to ask for the needle. That was the law”
“The art of every hostess, was to see that volunteers didn’t leave”
Notion of human decency
“What on earth could make Suicide Hostesses turn against every concept of human decency”
Comedic overtone
“America has changed in many ways, but it had yet to adopt the metric system”
Frank narration style
“Most people looked twenty-two, thanks to the anti-aging shots they took twice a year”
Sexuality linked to human form
“What in hell is a girl with hip like yours doing selling death?”
Science and religion influence on morality
“His dream was to introduce morality into the monkey house”
“Fit things for a Christian family to see”
Metaphoric title
Welcome to the monkey house
Billy’s characterisation
“I have spent this night… attempting to restore a certain amount of innocent pleasure to the world”
Frank narration style about sex
“All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex”
“Society would collapse if people used sex for nothing but pleasure”
Connotations of virgin
“All hostesses were virgins”
