Sunday, December 22, 2019
A Feminist Analysis Of The Monkey House And Miss...
A Feminist Analysis of ââ¬Å"Welcome to the Monkey Houseâ⬠and ââ¬Å"Miss Temptationâ⬠Kurt Vonnegut is known for his dark humor, wit, and imagination. He is consistently listed among the great American authors of the later twentieth century and his novelââ¬â¢s such as Catââ¬â¢s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five are considered modern classics. In this essay, I will focus on two of Vonnegutââ¬â¢s short stories ââ¬Å"Welcome to the Monkey Houseâ⬠(1968) which takes place in a dystopian future where everyone is required to take pills that take all the pleasure out of sex and ââ¬Å"Miss Temptationâ⬠(1959) which takes place in a small east coast town by looking at them through a feminist lense. Both stories come to the same ultimate conclusion that over-moralization of humanâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦When Nancy counters this with ââ¬Å"you certainly manage to make a woman feel like an object rather than a person,â⬠Billyââ¬â¢s response is ââ¬Å "thank the pills for that.â⬠This moment is presented as one of the first ââ¬Å"lessonsâ⬠that Billy teaches Nancy, that the pills are bad and somehow making her less of a woman. However, what it really suggests is that a woman isnââ¬â¢t worth listening to if her sexuality isnââ¬â¢t involved. Once Nancy reaches Billyââ¬â¢s hideout, other women are more than happy to assist him in raping her. It is later revealed that all of these other women were also once raped by Billy but have now ââ¬Å"they understandâ⬠and ââ¬Å"theyââ¬â¢re grateful.â⬠The fact that these victims would not only be happy to assist their rapist and kidnapper but also are described as almost worshipping him seems to suggest more of a Stockholm syndrome situation instead of one where Billy has ââ¬Å"savedâ⬠them. Billy obviously holds the power within his ââ¬Å"gangâ⬠and these women are willing to do whatever it takes to help him rape other women. The idea that all th ese women needed to become grateful was to be forcefully ââ¬Å"defloweredâ⬠by Billy perpetuates the patriarchal idea that women need to be introduced (often forcefully) to their own sexuality. Instead of just letting the women stop taking their pills and then waiting for them to make their ownShow MoreRelatedLogical Reasoning189930 Words à |à 760 Pagesbeen broken all week. The prosecutor has also proved that Mayfield arrived at the grocery that night at about 2 a.m. The evidence for that is that the time was on the grocery receipt found in his wastebasket when the police arrested Mayfield at his house later that morning. Mayfield matches the general description of the robber given by the clerk at 2:30 a.m., when she talked to the police. So weve got to conclude that Mayfield was in the store at 2 a.m. and that the robbery occurred before 2:30
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