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"Fortitude" is a "closet drama" reworked from an unused teleplay first published in Playboy in September 1968 and reprinted in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons in 1974 and the second volume of Library of America's Vonnegut set in 2011. It was also included in the 1975 anthology Human-Machines: An Anthology of Stories About Cyborgs, edited by Thomas N. Scortia and George Zebrowski and The Ultimate Frankenstein, edited by Byron Preiss in 1991.

Plot Summary[]

In present day Upstate New York, general practitioner Dr. Elbert Little is being shown around the estate of billionaire widow Sylvia Lovejoy by Dr. Norbert Frankenstein. For 36 years Frankenstein, with his assistant Dr. Tom Swift, has been keeping the now 100 year old Sylvia alive through seventy eight operations. They have completely replaced her internal organs with specially designed machines, with some, like her pancreas, custom built in under two weeks and worth more than the whole of Little's home state of Vermont. Little—whom Sylvia has invited to visit by letter after he was named Family Doctor of the Year by Ladies' Home Journalis impressed by her "courage" and "fortitude." Swift, listening to Sylvia's room on headphones, tells them she's having her hair brushed. Frankenstein demonstrates, to Little's horror, how the doctors can even control her mood, setting her temporarily to sadness and then quickly back to greater happiness than before.

In her room filled with flowers, candy, and books, beautician Gloria brushes the hair of Sylvia, who has begun tearing up but doesn't know why. Sylvia is now only a head attached to a tripod connected to the various mechanical organs. Nearby she has a pen and paper for writing letters, a partially finished jigsaw puzzle, and a bag of knitting with a sweater, all of which she can manipulate with robotic arms. Howard Derby, the mailman, enters with fifty three letters and Sylvia's mood is suddenly much better. One, from a poverty-stricken woman in Wheeling, West Virginia, sympathizes with the wealthy Sylvia's plight, having just read about it in a fourteen year old Reader's Digest. Sylvia is worried about a letter she's written to Dr. Little that she now thinks was too self-pitying since there are other, far poorer people with much more difficult lives instead of all the care she's received. Little and Frankenstein are standing outside Sylvia's room, about to enter. Little notices a sign telling people to enter smiling, Frankenstein informing him that they "treat the whole patient." Gloria comes out crying and implores Frankenstein to let Sylvia finally die. He fires her on the spot and asks how she could want such a thing. Gloria says that she's Sylvia best friend and loves her, something Frankenstein could never understand.

Frankenstein replies he's only loved two women in his life: his mother and Sylvia. When his mother was dying of cancer just after he graduated medical school in Heidelberg, Frankenstein pushed himself to save her, even though all the other doctors said it was impossible. He kept at it so obsessively that was institutionalized and when finally released, his mother has already died. Realizing the future of medicine was in machinery, he studied mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering for six years at M.I.T. to become "the only guy on earth with the proper education to practice 20th century medicine." At the Curley Clinic in Boston, Sylvia, who looked like Frankenstein's mother, was brought in, with all the doctor's saying she would die. Instead, he saved her out of love. Gloria tells him that Sylvia asked her to bring a gun so she could kill herself last month, but Frankenstein is not surprised and also aware that in her letter to Little she asked for cyanide. Little is shocked that they read Sylvia's mail, but he replies that if they didn't they would not know her real state of mind. He challenges Little to visit her himself and evaluate her condition. Little enters and introduces himself, saying he hasn't brought any cyanide. She replies that today is so lovely she wouldn't take it anyway. But she does wish to talk about death, which she's heard sometimes described as a blessing. Little says that in his profession he can't take that view, but remarks that people say that when the pain is so great, or incurable with the patient's resources, or when brain dead it can be a release. Sylvia remarks that Frankenstein has intimated that should her brain begin to fail, yet another machine could take its place.

Later, Little observes the doctors putting Sylvia to sleep for the night. He asks about the potential for Sylvia to commit suicide, but Frankenstein says Swift designed her robotic arms such that she can't shoot herself or bring something to her lips. An alarm sounds and they find Gloria claiming to have come back for her watch but, before they could arrive, hid a gun in Sylvia's knitting bag. Frankenstein checks the room but finds nothing. They take Gloria to the organ room for the first time, which horrifies her, and she asks again why they won't let that "tiny little spark of what [Sylvia] use to be" finally die. Frankenstein realizes the microphone to Sylvia's room is still on and she's heard everything Gloria said. Gloria tells her about the gun in her knitting bag and Frankenstein calmly walks to her room. He finds Gloria unable to kill herself and he confesses his love for her, telling her that all the mechanical organs have been designed for double capacity. When his body fails, he will join her for hundreds of years, sharing themselves entirely. Sylvia shoots him. Swift and Little, with less than a half hour to do it, have connected Frankenstein's head on his own tripod. After putting on a recording of the song "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life", they wake the two heads and Sylvia asks Frankenstein how he feels. "Fine," he replies, "Just fine."[1]

Background[]

A New York Times article on March 1, 1968 reported that Vonnegut, along with "William Peter Blatty, Francis Ford Coppola, Bruce Jay Friedman, Jack Gelber, Paul Krassner, Terry Southern, [and] Jean Claude Van Italie", had each been asked to contribute an episode for an eight-part theatrical film called Virtues.[2] It was described as "an uninhibited look at America today," to be produced by Raymond Wagner and Si Litvinoff for C.B.S. Films.[3] First commissioned in 1967 as "an extended skit," when the special was canceled the teleplay was rewritten as a "closet drama" at the request of Robie Macauley, the fiction editor at Playboy, which published the work in September 1968.[4]

Adaptation[]

"Fortitude" was adapted during the second season of the Showtime anthology series Kurt Vonnegut's Monkey House, and first aired on January 3, 1993. It was directed by Wayne Tourell, written by Stan Daniels, and starred Frank Langella, Malcolm Stewart, Yvonne Lawley, and Susan Brady.[5][6] The episode gained three nominations at the 1993 CableACE awards for Frank Langella as Best Actor in a Dramatic Series, Stan Daniels for Best Writing a Dramatic Series, and the episode overall for Best Dramatic or Theatrical Special, winning in the latter two categories. Daniels was also nominated for a Gemini award for Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series.[7]

  1. "Fortitude", Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973, pp. 756-772.
  2. "Fortitude" is one of the seven heavenly virtues of Christianity.
  3. "C.B.S. Plans 8-Part Film", The New York Times, March 1, 1968, Page 33.
  4. "Notes on the Texts", Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973, pg. 835. There Offit states the canceled work was called The Seven Deadly Virtues.
  5. Kurt Vonegut's Monkey House: Fortitude, YouTube.
  6. "Fortitude", Kurt Vonnegut's Money House, IMDb.
  7. "Awards", Kurt Vonnegut's Monkey House, IMDb.
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