Welcome to the Monkey House

Its theatrical excitement comes from the brilliant words and the dazzling display of original ideas. Vonnegut begins with a moving episode about right now in which a young man searches for companionship and identity through participation in amateur theatricals, appropriately entitled Who Am I This Time? An edged satire of the future concludes the first act. The Time's literary critic describes Vonnegut as "... a zany but moral mad scientist at the controls of a literary time machine. He is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer. Though Vonnegut is knocking a misplaced sense of values by showing the horrifying results, he's doing it with an irreverent chuckle." The final scene, entirely realistic and modern, gets to the heart of what really concerns young people as a music teacher fights to salvage a rebellious young man, explaining to him how one might bring beauty into the world. "Love yourself," the teacher tells him, "and make your instrument sing about it."