Mother Night
.jpg?lang=en) Cover art of first edition paperback | |
| Author | Kurt Vonnegut |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Fawcett Publications/Gold Medal Books |
Publication date | 1961 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
Mother Night is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1961. A film version starring Nick Nolte was released in 1996.
It is the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, who moved to Germany directly after World War I and then later became alternately a well-known German language playwright and a Nazi propagandist. The action of the novel is narrated (through the use of metafiction) by Campbell himself. The premise is that he is writing his memoirs while awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison. Howard W. Campbell also appears briefly in Vonnegut's later novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Campbell's character was probably inspired by the stories of WWII radio propagandist William Joyce, a.k.a. Lord Haw-Haw, and Ezra Pound although only in the most general terms.
Explanation of the novel's title
The title of the book is taken from Goethe's Faust.
Plot summary
Germany, Pre-WWII
During the Nazi build-up after the seizure of power in 1933, Campbell decided to stay on in Germany despite his parents having left. He continued to write plays, his only associations being with members of the ruling Nazi party as his social contacts. Being of sufficiently acceptable parentage, Campbell became a member of the Nazis in name only. The truth of the matter was that he was politically apathetic—he only really cared about two things, his art, and his wife Helga, who was also the starring actress in all of his plays.
The first part of the book ends after Campbell has an encounter on a park bench in the Berlin Zoo. While sitting on the bench he was approached by a man calling himself Frank Wirtanen. He doesn't introduce himself right away, but Campbell eventually finds out that he is an agent of the U.S. War Department. Wirtanen works on Campbell, and appeals to his sense of adventure. He wants Campbell to spy for the U.S. in the upcoming war. Campbell immediately rejects the offer, but Wirtanen quickly adds that he wants Campbell to think about it. He tells him that Campbell's answer will come in the form of how he acts and what positions he assumes once the U.S. and Germany declare war on each other.
Germany, WWII and afterwards
- "The real reason was that I was a ham ... I would fool everyone with my brilliant impersonation of a Nazi".
Once World War II starts, he begins to make his way up through Joseph Goebbels' propaganda organization, eventually becoming the "voice" of broadcasts aimed at propagandizing people in the United States. The spy part of the job comes in when he is transmitting his vitriolic messages. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, all of the idiosyncrasies of his speech, the deliberate pauses, the coughs, etc. are all part of the code that he is sending out. Campbell never discovers, nor is he ever told (except in one notable instance) what the information is that he is sending.
About halfway through the war his wife goes to the Eastern Front to entertain the German troops. Campbell is extremely distraught when he hears that the camp where she had been entertaining had been overrun and she was presumed dead. (In a much later exchange, Wirtanen reveals that Campbell had passed the fact that his wife probably died in a coded message about a week before Campbell himself had found out.) Right before the Soviet Army invades Berlin Campbell visits his in-laws one last time. Helga's father had been chief of police in Berlin and tells Campbell that he never liked him. He even comes right out and says that he always thought that Campbell had been a spy. He amends the statement to say though that even if he had been a spy, he had been so good at the propaganda business that he never could have served the other side better than he had served the Germans. Also, while at his in-laws house he has an exchange with Helga's younger sister Resi that will resonate with him years later.
Eventually he is captured by U.S. forces who recognize him for what he was, or rather what he had been pretending to be, a convinced Nazi, and a clear perpetrator of heinous war crimes. Wirtanen works a deal though where Campbell is set free and then given passage to New York City, whence the rest of the action of the book takes place.
New York City
In New York City, Campbell lives an ordinary existence, choosing to stay out of sight. The only friend that he makes is George Kraft who lives in his building, and who through an extraordinary coincidence also happens to be a Soviet intelligence agent. Through his friendship with Campbell, Kraft tries to get back into the good graces of his Soviet handlers (he had fallen out of favor during the previous years) by tricking Campbell into fleeing to Moscow by publicizing the fact that Campbell had been living in NYC since the end of the war. Wirtanen again makes an appearance to warn Campbell of the plot, but this time Campbell decides to go along with it. As before though, Wirtanen uses his influence to get Campbell set free after the FBI raids Kraft's hiding place. But once Campbell gets back to his apartment, he decides to turn himself in to the Israelis to stand trial.
Israel
The book ends as it began, with Campbell sitting in his Israeli jail cell waiting for his trial. Coincidentally, he meets Adolf Eichmann in a short 24 hour stay at a prison in Tel Aviv, where he gives Eichmann advice about how to write an autobiography. He then is transferred to a different holding cell where he further awaits his trial. At the very end of the book Campbell inserts a letter that he had just received from "Frank Wirtanen." The corroborating evidence that he was indeed an American spy during World War II had finally arrived. In the last lines Campbell tells us that he will hang himself not for crimes against humanity, but rather for "crimes against himself."'
"The moral of the story"
The phrase "one moral of this story," is one that comes up several times in the novel. As Vonnegut, posing as Campbell's editor, points out in his introduction: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Another is "Make love when you can. It's good for you." Yet another is "When you're dead, you're dead."
Literary devices
Throughout the novel Vonnegut uses metafiction devices to blur the line between pretence and reality; for example, the book's dedication is to Mata Hari, and in the text we read that the dedication is Campbell's: "She whored in the interests of espionage, and so did I." Similarly, Vonnegut's introduction treats Campbell's memoir as a genuine historical document, and claims that certain chapters have been censored due to pornography or fears of libel.
External links
ISBN 0-385-33414-1