A Gorilla in the Guest-room Summary & Analysis

In his second year of owning his New Jersey zoo, Gerald Durrell decides that it's time to “weed out” all of the common animals and replace them with species that are threatened with extinction in the wild. While he's wondering which species he should start with, he recounts that the decision is quickly taken out of his hands. An animal dealer calls him to ask if he'd be interested in adopting a baby gorilla. Durrell is not particularly trusting that the dealer can actually identify any animal correctly. In fact, he’s a little worried he’ll end up with a chimpanzee. However, just in case it truly is a gorilla, he asks how much it would cost to buy.

He's alarmed to be told that the gorilla will cost £1,200 to adopt. After briefly worrying about what his bank manager will say to this, he decides to chat with his mother and his wife Jacquie about it. His mother says she thinks it's a lovely idea, but Jacquie is flabbergasted that he’s considering spending all that money on a gorilla. She’s very much against it, telling him he must be “stark staring mad.” Durrell decides that despite their objections, he's going to try and campaign to raise the money to adopt the gorilla. Durrell picks up the phone and calls his friend Hope, who chuckles at the ridiculousness of the idea of asking “all the rich people on the island” to buy a gorilla, but agrees to help.

Hope asks why he’s so invested in buying this gorilla, and Durrell protests that unless somebody starts to try to save them the species will soon be extinct. Hope commiserates, but reminds him that the average person has no idea about the importance of gorilla welfare. Durrell starts to call around Jersey’s wealthiest people to see if he can scrape together the money. He collects small amounts from some people but is astonished when Major Domo, a person he’s never met, offers to “make up the balance” of £1000. Durrell is wildly excited and rushes around the zoo to spread the good news.

Durrell flies to London to pick up the ape, and someone from the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals picks him up and takes him to the animal shelter where the gorilla lives. Durrell is worried because—when he walks into the RSPCA building—the first things he sees are a couple of baby chimpanzees. He’s sure he was right about being sold the wrong animal. However, his worries are soon assuaged when the dealer opens a crate in the corner of the room, and N’Pongo the gorilla walks out. Durrell is immediately smitten with him, as the baby gorilla knuckles its way across the room to him.

Durrell describes how intensely real and heavy the little gorilla feels, as he has no fat on his body and is just a mass of muscle and bone. He sits down at the table with N’Pongo and feeds him a banana, which N’Pongo accepts with delight and devours. Durrell notes that the little gorilla eats the banana extremely neatly, unlike the messy chimpanzees. When they get back to the zoo, Durrell takes the gorilla to live in his guest room for a little while as his cage isn’t ready. Jacquie and Durrell’s mother are immediately won over by N’Pongo, allowing him to lounge around and feeding him treats. Everyone, including Durrell, is astonished by his “beautiful behavior” as he walks around the house inspecting everything intelligently like a “professor.” Because of this, Durrell’s mother tries to persuade him to keep N’Pongo in the house, but Durrell knows that won’t be possible.

Indeed, N’Pongo doesn’t leave the guest room as tidy as a human guest might: instead, Durrell explains drily that the baby gorilla takes the tinned raspberries he’s given and uses them to draw something on the wall that resembles “a map of Japan drawn by [...] inebriated ancient mariners.” N’Pongo also scatters straw everywhere and bends the door handle vertically downward while trying to open it. Instead of being annoyed, Durrell treats N’Pongo like a visitor from another country. In this context it’s totally unsurprising that he doesn’t understand all the cultural obligations of the Durrell household.

N’Pongo’s behavior is so intelligent and polite that he quickly becomes “the darling of the zoo,” and is so well-behaved that he’s allowed to exercise outside of his cage. His conduct isn’t perfect, however. His favorite pastime is waiting for an unsuspecting zoo visitor to get too close, and then to swipe their leg out from under them. This results in a lot of laughter but also a lot of “slipped disks” for the gorilla’s victims. Durrell explains that while a gorilla raised in captivity might have the best manners in the world, there always comes a time when they have to be kept away from humans. Gorillas learn to play from their companions, and if they are “nice natured” they will want to continue to play as they grow. Despite their good intentions, games that weren’t dangerous when a gorilla was a baby become very dangerous when it’s an enormous adult.

Durrell and the other zookeepers decide that, so N’Pongo doesn’t become one of the “magnificent, but sad and lonely” apes one sees in other zoos, he needs “a wife.” They buy another gorilla who, although she seems healthy, arrives in a crate the author says he would have “considered small for a squirrel.” Nandy is a smart, soulful gorilla, but is deeply frightened of humans. Durrell thinks that this is because of a thick, white scar on the top of her head, which he says looks like she was almost killed with a machete when she was captured. He notes that it reminds him of the precise partings that some people from African cultures style their hair around.

They keep Nandy in a separate cage for 24 hours so she can get acclimated. It’s close to N’Pongo’s so that she can see him and familiarize herself with his scent, but she doesn’t seem very interested in the other gorilla. Nandy still finds it difficult to make eye contact with anyone, looking woebegone and frightened. Her eyes “slide” past everybody and onto the ground. The way she looks makes everybody want to pick her up and comfort her, but it's also clear that that's the last thing that she would want. Durrell thinks it will take her a long time to get over the trauma of her capture and her scarring injury.

The day that they do decide to let Nandy into the cage with N’Pongo is incredibly exciting, but also a real point of anxiety. Nandy is terrified of humans. By contrast, N’Pongo thinks that he's the only gorilla in the world and that every human in the world is his best friend. Neither of the gorillas seems very interested in becoming acquainted with one another. When the cage doors are opened, all the zookeepers stand by with “buckets of water, brushes, nets, and long sticks” in case the gorillas need to be forcibly separated.

The initial introduction seems to go well, however. Nandy sidles into N’Pongo's cage and finds herself a safe place far from him, sitting against the wall. Everybody is frozen as the two gorillas contemplate each other. Finally, N’Pongo comes down from his perch. He begins his introduction to Nandy by rolling himself carefully to the ground and nonchalantly picking up a pile of sawdust to inspect it as if he's never seen it before. In a “casual swaggering manner” he walks around Nandy, pretending not to notice her. Then, like a child on the playground, he quickly reaches out and tugs a big piece of her hair. Then he cheekily runs away as if nothing happened.

Durrell says that if this were a competition, the first round would go to N’Pongo. He’s worried that the male gorilla will get “exalted views of male superiority” and decides to take a different tack. The keepers decide to introduce a different factor to balance things out. They take away the safety buffer of the buckets and sticks, as they’re clearly no longer needed, and instead produce two big dishes covered with fruit. One is given to each gorilla. There's a moment of tension when N’Pongo examines his plate and decides that Nandy’s looks better. However, as soon as N’Pongo approaches Nandy responds with “such a display of belligerence” that N’Pongo makes a hasty retreat.

Throughout the next day, Durrell reports that both of the gorillas do their best to get the upper hand over one another. Like a human couple, they are “working out their own protocol” to figure out how they will use the space together. He says, tongue firmly in cheek, that these negotiations have “the childishness of a general election” but are much more interesting. Continuing in this political vein, Durrell informs his reader that by the evening, Nandy has achieved “what amounted to votes for female gorillas”: she and N’Pongo are now sharing the sleeping shelf. Durrell then explains that the gorilla “marriage” is an immediate success and that N’Pongo and Nandy quickly grow to adore one another. N’Pongo is a clown and Nandy remains more introspective and serious. Like many successful couples, they’re a happy combination of opposites.

Durrell, Jacquie, and all the other keepers are very pleased to have acquired animals so endearing and so valuable. It’s not all roses, however. The author explains that although the gorillas are happy, the zoo is in a constant state of anxiety over their well-being. Because a gorilla's constitution is so delicate, a lot of the time the zookeepers spend together is now involved in discussing the animals’ bowel movements. A dinner party of Durrell’s is interrupted by a keeper intoning over the intercom that he must report that “the gorillas have diarrhea again.” Despite this, Nandy and N’Pongo never develop any of the serious diseases the zookeepers are really worried they’ll contract.

However, at one point, just before Durrell is supposed to go away to spend three weeks in the South of France with the BBC, N’Pongo does get really sick. The author describes him as having no exuberance left, not being able to eat or take any water or milk, and having horrible diarrhea. N’Pongo loses weight with extreme rapidity, and Durrell says that he looks as if he's begun “to shrink and shrivel.” He also becomes very melancholy, which is apparently typical of the behavior of great apes when they're ill. In order to try and get him to eat something, Durrell and Jacquie, desperate, go down to the market and pick up fruit that they think might appeal to the ape’s weakening appetite.

Durrell and Jacquie buy him some watermelon, hoping its bright color and icy texture will appeal. He’s frantic with worry that he’s going to watch the gorilla starve to death in front of his very eyes. By now N’Pongo is close to death, as he can't take in any fluids or eat any food. He’ll drink sips of milk to wash the taste of medicine from his mouth, but there seems to be nothing else the keepers can do. He's apathetic about pretty much everything, and behaves in a very melancholy, depressed manner. Nandy is also miserable as she watches her mate waste away. Despite their concerns, after a long moment of deliberation, N’Pongo does eat a slice of the proffered watermelon. This cheers up Durrell immensely.

However, all is not yet well. It’s encouraging that N’Pongo will take small bites of watermelon, but he still won’t drink any fluids. Durrell decides that they have no choice but to try giving him antibiotics by injection. They are concerned that it’ll be too dangerous to inject him, or that he won’t stay still. The other keeper Jeremy tempts N’Pongo with some slices of watermelon, and he slowly exits his cage. Durrell quickly injects him, but he barely reacts. The keepers continue to lure him with melon and give him injections, but there don’t seem to be any immediate improvements. Durrell is very nervous because he’s still due to leave for France very shortly; it would be almost impossible to cancel the whole trip. However, he can’t bear the thought of leaving N’Pongo.

Miraculously, the night before Durrell is supposed to leave N’Pongo starts to perk up. He drinks a great deal of Complan—a kind of intensely fortified milk the keepers ply him with—and begins to eat a lot of fruit. Durrell is delighted and leaves for France, knowing his gorilla guest is on the mend. He makes several extremely expensive long-distance calls every day to see how the gorilla is doing. It’s well worth it, as the news is all of improvement.

By the time Durrell’s home from his France trip—a resounding success—N’Pongo has regained all the weight he lost while he was ill, and is back to looking rotund and shiny. The mischievous sparkle is back in his eye, and he resumes trying to play pranks on Durrell as soon as the author enters the room with the cage. As he watches the gorilla try to attract his attention, Durrell reflects that although he loves having the gorillas, it’s a “double-edged sword.” He knows how important it is to keep and breed these animals in captivity for conservation efforts, but also grumbles about how anxious they make everyone when they’re ill.