Kurt Vonnegut, Author of the short story collaboration Welcome to the Monkey House, expressed two messages inspired by his siblings. As stated in his preface "No pain" were the last words of his dying sister and in a letter from his brother after he had his first child it said "Here I am, cleaning shit off of practically everything." He said the two main themes of his novels were just those two statements. These themes were expressed in the short stories of Welcome to the Monkey House. "No pain" easily inspired "Harrison Bergeron" and "Long Walk to Forever." Then, "Here I am Cleaning shit off practically everything" contributed to the creation of "Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son.".
In "Harrison Bergeron", people were given handicaps to enforce the equality of all people. No one could feel less then another because they were not given the opportunity to. If intelligent people started to have an intelligent thought, an incredibly loud sound would crash through the persons head eliminating any thoughts they once had. Creating a world where no one could be smarter then anyone else, so no one could feel stupid. Everyone was equal to the least intelligent people. If someone was beautiful they had to wear an incredibly ugly mask so that they could not stand out and no one could feel less if near them. They also put a handicap on memory. Hazel Bergeron, the mother of Harrison Bergeron, watched her son get shot and killed on television. She cried for a short time, then completely forgot why she started. She felt no pain, for she was not allowed to. .
In the "Long Walk To Forever", a guy named Newt went to the house of a lifetime friend, Catharine. He was in the army, he had gone AWOL when he was granted the knowledge of Catharine's up and coming marriage. He was in love with her and had never let her know. Despite all odds he showed up at her door and asked her to walk with him. Then he randomly, after years of nothing like this, told her he was in love with her.
