English Literature

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.s Mother Night is a masterpiece of Black Humor. Mother Night, is presented as the work of one Howard W. Campbell, Jr. who is a prisoner awaiting trial in Israel for Nazi war crimes, with Vonnegut as the editor of the work. Unlike many of Vonneguts other works, the story is not concerned with the future, it is set in present day settings with Howard reminiscing about his past. Howard dedicates his recollections to Mata Hari, a Dutch exotic dancer who was executed by the French on the charge of spying for Germany. Campbell identifies himself with Mata Hari, who, if the charges against her are to be believed, allowed French government officials to violate her, in order to gain information for Germany. Campbell too feels thoroughly and completely used and violated.

I closed my eyes windingly.What is it they say in the Chicago Stockyards about what they do to a pig
I dont know, said Wirtanen.

They boast that they find a use for everything about a pig but his squeal, I said.
So said Wirtanen.

Thats how I feel right now   I said, Take a pig thats been taken apart, whos had experts find a use for every part. By God  I think they even found a use for my squeal The part of me that wanted to tell the truth got turned into an expert liar The lover in me got turned into a pornographer The artist in me got turned into ugliness such as the world has rarely seen before.

Even my most cherished memories have now been converted into cat food, glue and liverwurst I said (Vonnegut Jr.).

In the introduction, Vonnegut rededicates the text that he has edited to Campbell himself, a man who served evil too openly and good too secretly, the crime of his time (Vonnegut Jr.). In his introduction to his edited text Vonnegut ascribes a moral to the story We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be (Vonnegut Jr.). The story Campbell recounts in his cell is this Before the Second World War, Howard W. Campbell was an American writer living in Germany. He was married to a German woman, Helga and deeply in love with her. At the start of the war Campbell was approached by American intelligence and agreed to become a secret agent. He took up a job as a Nazi radio host and propagandist. He broadcasted secret messages out of Germany coded in his racist propaganda broadcasts. Campbell was extremely good as a Nazi propagandist, as his father-in-law, a Nazi police official notes you could never have served the enemy as well as you served us (Vonnegut Jr.). The Germans were deceived into thinking that he really was an enthusiastic American supporter of Nazism, even his wife believed him. Because of the Nazi propaganda he had to spread in order to maintain his cover, Campbell believes and admits to committing high treason, crimes against humanity, and crimes against his own conscience before the Israeli court (Vonnegut Jr.).

The Russians want Campbell in order to use him to show how America shelters fascist war criminals and to prove that the American government collaborated with the Nazis at the start of the Nazi regime. The Israelis know him only as a Nazi propagandist and want to hang him for war crimes. There are those to whom he is a hero. An extreme right-wing group of American white supremacists considers him a saint and a martyr in the holy Nazi cause (Vonnegut Jr.) they feel that they are indebted to him with a debt with a debt of gratitude that they will never be able to repay For having the courage to tell the truth during the war,  when everybody else was telling lies (Vonnegut Jr.). One of the persistent characters in the novel, Bernard B. OHare, an American Legion post Americanism chairman, named after Vonneguts real life war buddy and also depicted in Slaughterhouse-Five (Allen and Vonnegut Jr.), is Campbells  nemesis, his own personal Fury (Vonnegut Jr.). He has dedicated his life to destroying Campbell. The leader of Campbells racist fans is Lionel Jason David Jones, publisher of The White Christian Minutemen, a scabrous, illiterate, anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, and anti-Catholic hate sheet (Vonnegut Jr.). Campbell calls him a race-baiter who is ignorant and insane (Vonnegut Jr.), Campbell contrasts himself with Jones and says I am neither ignorant nor insane (Vonnegut Jr.).

Despite his assertion that he is not insane, Campbell is meant to be a schizophrenic character. In an interview with Charles Reilly Vonnegut says that the idea for the novel came to him from his conversation with a retired Naval Intelligence officer at a cocktail party, who told him that all undercover spies have to be schizophrenics otherwise they would either blow their cover of die of fright (Allen and Vonnegut Jr.).
Schizophrenia would explain the way Campbell immerses him in his cover job as a Nazi propagandist and does far more than he is required to do. One of the characteristics of Schizophrenics is that they are able to hold two mutually exclusive beliefs at the same time. Campbell says But Ive always known what I did. Ive always been able to live with what I did. How Through that simple and widespread boon to modern mankind  schizophrenia (Vonnegut Jr.). Schizophrenia would also mean that Campbell is innocent of the charge of committing war crimes because schizophrenics are not in control of their own actions.

Self-preservation is a humans most basic instinct. Humans, in their right mind usually prefer life to death. Campbell however, appears to prefer death to life, this is in itself evidence of insanity. Campbell spent thirteen years obsessing over his dead wife Helga.

And so, with my Helga presumed dead, I became a death-worshiper, as content as any narrow-minded religious nut anywhere. Always alone, I drank toasts to her, said good morning to her, said good night to her, played music for her, and didnt give a damn for one thing else (Vonnegut Jr.).

Campbell is unconcerned with making attempts to save himself from conviction he looks upon his lawyers efforts to save him with contempt.

My Israeli lawyer, Mr. Alvin Dobrowitz, has had all my New York mail forwarded here, hoping unreasonably to find in that mail some proof of my innocence. Hi ho (Vonnegut Jr.).

The novel has an excessively grim ending. The American Intelligence agent who recruited Campbell appears like a guardian angel and the charges against him are dropped. But having escaped execution and gained his freedom Howard Campbell Jr. decides to commit suicide

I find the prospect nauseating. I think that tonight is the night I will hang Howard Campbell Jr. for crimes against himself (Vonnegut Jr.).