Chapter 5: Harlow’s Monkeys – Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Joyce Carol Oates’s poem “Harlow’s Monkeys” is divided into four distinct sections that collectively critique the famous psychological experiments conducted by Harry Harlow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The poem begins by adopting a playful tone, proposing that monkeys are inherently funny and that their noise is harmless; this light-hearted framing quickly darkens.

In the second section, the speaker reveals that the monkeys’ screams are identical to human screams, and therefore not funny. To maintain calm in the laboratory, Dr. Harlow had the monkeys’ vocal cords surgically removed, effectively silencing their protests. The third section is told from the perspective of the monkeys themselves. They describe being taken from their mothers at birth, raised in isolation, and forced to cling to wire dolls covered in cloth in a futile search for comfort and nourishment. The experiment progresses to “learned helplessness” and the infamous “pit of despair.” The final section steps back to comment on the institutional pressure to be cruel in order to publish and succeed; Harlow changed his name from Israel to Harlow for professional advancement, and the stanza ends with a grim image of a baby calf slowly growing to veal in its cage, linking laboratory cruelty to industrial farming.

Key Events

The poem opens with the assertion that being a monkey is funny, and that people laugh at monkeys without consequence.
It reveals that monkey screams are identical to human screams, challenging the initial humor.
Harlow orders the surgical removal of the monkeys’ vocal cords to prevent screaming in the lab.
The monkeys are taken from their mothers at birth and placed in social isolation.
They are given wire-doll surrogates; one bare wire with a milk bottle, another covered in cloth but without milk.
The monkeys exhibit listlessness and brokenness when the wire doll is removed, a state called “learned helplessness” and “pit of despair.”
The final stanza comments on the necessity of cruelty for scientific publication and success, drawing a parallel to veal calves.

Character Development

The poem does not develop traditional characters but instead gives voice to a collective subject: the monkeys. Their personified perspective moves from a comic role to a tragic one, as they recall their helplessness and longing for love that never comes. Harry Harlow appears as an offstage figure whose decisions shape the monkeys’ fate. He is portrayed as a scientist willing to perform cruelty in order to achieve prominence, changing his name and following professional imperatives. The monkeys remain essentially static—victims from birth to death—but their emotional depth grows through the poem’s unfolding.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Scientific Cruelty and the Price of Knowledge: The central theme is the ethical cost of experimental psychology. The monkeys’ suffering is presented as a direct consequence of the drive to publish and succeed.
Maternal Deprivation and the Search for Love: The wire-mother surrogate symbolizes the inadequacy of artificial care; the monkeys’ persistent seeking of milk and love where none exists highlights the biological need for attachment.
Silenced Voices: The removal of vocal cords is a powerful motif for the erasure of protest. The scream (both monkey and human) becomes a symbol of authentic pain that society refuses to hear.
The Pit of Despair: This literal apparatus from Harlow’s experiments becomes a metaphor for hopelessness and learned helplessness, a state induced by total isolation.
Complicity and Ambition: The final stanza implicates not only Harlow but the entire system that rewards cruelty, linking laboratory animal abuse to the veal industry—another example of suffering hidden from view.

Why This Chapter Matters

“Harlow’s Monkeys” serves as the emotional and ethical core of American Melancholy. It crystallizes the book’s exploration of how American progress and ambition often rest on unseen suffering. The poem functions as a sharp critique of mid-century psychology and by extension any scientific endeavor that treats living beings as disposable. Its placement in the collection invites readers to reflect on the melancholy that arises from acknowledging this cruelty—both historical and ongoing. The shift from light verse to stark indictment demonstrates Oates’s mastery of tone and her commitment to bearing witness.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the poem use the concept of humor to critique the experiments? The first section presents a naive, cultural view of monkeys as inherently funny, implying that their pain is not taken seriously. This frame is systematically dismantled when the poem reveals that monkey screams are identical to human screams, forcing the reader to confront the reality behind the amusement. The humor becomes a shield for cruelty.

2. What does the wire-mother symbolize, and why is its removal so devastating for the monkeys? The wire-mother represents a failed attempt at maternal love. Even though it provides no comfort, the monkeys cling to it as a substitute. When it is taken away, they descend into a state of learned helplessness, showing that the absence of any attachment is worse than an inadequate one. The wire-mother is a symbol of cold, mechanistic care that cannot satisfy emotional needs.

3. In what ways does the final stanza tie the poem together? The final stanza broadens the critique from Harlow’s lab to the institutional demand for results—one must be cruel to publish and succeed. By mentioning Harlow’s name change (Israel to Harlow) and ending with the image of a veal calf, the poem suggests that such cruelty is systemic and normalized across industries. It leaves the reader with a lingering question about the moral compromises embedded in American achievement.