Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You...."
Adam R. Marton
Written for "Currents in Modern American Lit."-- Inst. Dr.
Freedman Towson University--Baltimore, M.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has made important contributions to
the development of the 20th century American novel. His
influences are felt in modern social satire, as well as
nontraditional science fiction. One theme that is recurrent in
his work is the common portrayal of government forces as
destructive to individuals; to force characters to do evil in the
name of good.
Kurt Vonegut, Jr. was born November 11, 1922 in
Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of an architect. He attended
Cornell University in 1940, studying biochemistry, but soon quit
because his grades were poor. He worked as a columnist for the
Cornell Daily Sun until joining the army in 1942. He was captured
by the Germans in 1944 and forced to work in a factory, where he
lived through the fire bombing of Dresden. This, and the suicide
of his mother in 1944, were the two most influential events in
his life.
After the war he worked for the Chicago News Bureau and
studied anthropology. He has written many novels and one short
story collection. His most acclaimed work, Slaughterhouse-Five,
is a twisted account of the Dresden bombing. He is still alive
and writing. His most recent published work, Timequake,
appeared in the December 1997 Playboy Magazine.
Mother Night was Vonnegut's third novel and one his few
works that contains no elements of science fiction. Though this
novel is not one of his most critically acclaimed, it serves as
a prime example of Vonnegut's skill as a black humorist and
weaver of human absurdity.
Mother Night is the story of Howard W. Campbell, Jr, Nazi
radio propagandist and American spy. The novel begins and ends in
the same spot; a "new jail in old Jerusalem" (Mother Night p.17)
where Howard W. Campbell, Jr is awaiting trial for crimes against
humanity in World War II. Campbell is writing a book of his life
for documentation of war criminals and tells of the double life
he led during the war.
Campbell was an American playwright living in Germany at
the beginning of World War II. He wrote in German, had a German
wife, and was greatly accepted in German society. His life was
the theatre and he lived for two things; art and love. He had no
political interests and filled his days writing plays for his
beautiful wife, Helga, to star in.
Campbell was recruited as an American agent in 1938 by
Col. Frank Wirtanen. Throughout the war, he broadcast German
secrets to the Americans on his Nazi propaganda radio show.
Campbell became known, through his words, as the most vicious
anti-Semite and blood-thirsty Nazi who ever lived. He was also
considered the Americans' most valuable spy.
After the war, Campbell was a citizen of no nation. He
was captured by the Americans and then mysteriously released.
Only three people knew him for what he was, the world knew Howard
W. Campbell as a Nazi, which is also what he was.
Campbell returned to America. His wife, the one light in
his dark life, was missing and assumed dead. He took residence in
a dingy New York attic to ruminate about his lost Helga and the
web of lies that had become his life.
Campbell befriended George Kraft, an artist; aka Ian
Potapov, a Russian spy. Kraft alerted local Aryan groups of
Campbell's location and Campbell was soon brought back into light
as a famous Nazi by the Reverend Doctor Lionel J.D. Jones,
D.D.S., D.D., Aryan freedom fighter and publisher of The White
Christian Minuteman. The news of Campbell's presence surprised
the American government, who had no record of his citizenship,
and excited the Israeli army, who would have loved to see
Campbell swinging from the gallows.
Dr. Jones reunited Campbell with a woman who looked just
like his late wife, Helga. Even after the woman confessed to
being Helga's younger sister, Resi, Campbell, an old man by this
point, was still fairly happy to have a younger woman biding for
his affections. He forgave her for the deceit and they made
plans, along with Kraft, to move to Mexico to escape the Israeli
agents.
The trip was never made, however, because Kraft and Resi
were arrested as Russian spies, Dr. Jones for weapons violations,
and Campbell was once again mysteriously set free. No longer able
to bear the weight of his crimes and his loneliness, Campbell
turned himself over to the Israelis to face trial as a war
criminal.
The novel ends with Campbell receiving a letter from
Frank Wirtanen, the agent who recruited him, stating that he
would testify on Campbell's behalf at the trial. Campbell hung
himself at the thought of being saved.
Vonnegut's view of government as a destructive force to
individual characters, specifically Howard W. Campbell, Jr., is
obvious in Mother Night. Campbell's transformation from
stereotypical artist to world-renowned Nazi can be attributed not
only to the American government, who recruited him for the job,
but also to the German government, whose outlandish morals and
messages provided a perfect outlet for Campbell's wicked deceit.
There are two periods of degradation that Campbell goes
through in Mother Night. The first is his transformation from
gentle artist to Nazi propagandist. This can obviously be
attributed directly to the American government for recruiting him
into its service.
The government can also be blamed, however, for
Campbell's viciousness in radio propaganda. After all, he was
chosen because of his theatre training and place in German
society. They knew he was a "ham" and would love to play the
part of a war heronazi radio staramerican spy.
By instructing Campbell to work his way up the German
chain of command, they gave him permission to be a Nazi, to
perform and serve ideas that are inherently evil in the name of
good. As an American spy, Campbell had a license to do and say
evil things, yet still be able to claim that he was an agent of
good. This concept is what allowed Campbell to justify taking his
character so far. He was a good spy, but at the same time he
promoted the enemy too well. His father-in-law reflected on this
point after the war:
"And do you know why I don't care now if you were
a spy or not?.... Because you could never have served the
enemy as well as you served us," he said. "I realized that
almost all the ideas that I hold now, that make me unashamed
of anything I may have felt or done as a nazi, came not from
Hitler, not from Goebbels, not from Himmler- but from you.
You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone
insane." (p.80)
Despite the fact that the government is responsible for
turning Campbell into a Nazi, it takes no responsibility for the
extreme zest with which Campbell performed his duties. So vicious
was Campbell that even Frank Wirtanen, the man who recruited him,
denounces his acts after the war:
"How many people knew what I was doing?" I said.
"Three of us," he said.
"Three people in the world knew me for what I was-"
I said. "And all the rest-" I shrugged.
"They knew you for what you were, too," he said
abruptly.
"That wasn't me," I said, startled by his sharpness.
"Whoever he was-" said Wirtanen, "he was one of the
most vicious sons of bitches who ever lived." (p.138)
This leads us to Campbell's next period of degradation.
He realizes that ultimately he must take responsibility for his
acts, simply because no one else will. The government's refusal
to even acknowledge, much less absolve, Campbell forces him into
a world of guilt and self loathing. He hates himself for becoming
a man that he is not, and yet must be, for it is who he has
become.
The government's destruction of Campbell as a person is
two-fold. They first destroy his reputation and then his self
image. In doing this, Vonnegut makes an interesting point. If we
are perceived as a certain way by everyone around us, and then
perceived ourselves this way, this perception inevitably becomes
a reality. This point is made by Vonnegut in the opening lines of
the introduction of the novel, where he provides the reader with
a moral:
This is the only story of mine whose moral I know.
I don't think it's a marvelous moral; I simply happen to
know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be
careful about what we pretend to be. (p.v)
There is no villain in Mother Night. It is the story of
moral dilemma, a self-involved blind fight between God and the
devil.
Campbell completely personifies everything we love and
everything we hate about humanity. A walking paradox, Campbell
does evil thing in the name of good, all the right things for the
wrong reasons and visa versa. He is a lover of art and truth and
beauty, yet so oblivious to the ugliness he creates until the
impact is already so strong it destroys his life.
Vonnegut presents Campbell as a very complex character.
He is two equal sides; one appealing and attractive, one
inherently vile, both relatable. The two sides are complementary
and make Campbell a real person. Most interesting, however, is
that despite Campbell's vile side and evil acts and words, the
reader is led to believe that Campbell is a good person who
generally hates nazis and their ignorance. He is portrayed as an
intelligent, likable person who is fully aware of, and completely
remorseful for, his crimes. This leads the reader to a much more
sympathetic view of Campbell.
One scene in which this is shown is in Chapter 13, an
entire chapter dedicated to the biography of Reverend Doctor
Lionel Jones. I will discuss this chapter and it's implications
to the novel later, but it is important to examine Campbell's
disclaimer at the end of the chapter. He says:
Why should I have honored him with such a full-dress
biography? In order to contrast myself with a race-baiter
who is ignorant and insane. I am neither ignorant nor
insane. Those whose orders I carried out in Germany were as
ignorant and insane as Dr. Jones. I knew it. God help me,
I carried out their instructions anyway. (p.61)
Another scene that shows Campbell's contempt for Nazis
is the eulogy he gives for August Krapptauer, a Nazi who died in
Campbell's service.
I delivered my eulogy of August Krapptauer, saying,
incidentally, what I pretty much believe, that Krapptauer's
sort of truth would probably be with mankind forever, as
long as there were men and women around who listened to
their heart instead of their minds. (p.133)
Vonnegut uses the speech as a double entendre; the Nazis
believe it is a compliment to August Krapptauer, yet the reader
knows that it is a statement against racism.
Vonnegut's strongest statement against the idiocy of
bigotry and racism in Mother Night is the way in which he
portrays the post-war Nazis, especially the entourage of the
Reverend Doctor Jones. Jones himself is perhaps the most idiotic
character in the novel, as shown in his biography in Chapter 13.
Jones began as a dentist but was kicked out of dental
school because all of his papers, regardless of the subject,
related to his thesis that the teeth of blacks, Jews, and
Catholics proved that they were unequal. He published a book
entitled Jesus Was Not a Jew and started a newspaper for the
advancement of his hateful rhetoric. Though Vonnegut shows Jones
as Campbell's only true friend in the novel, the only major
character that at some point does not betray Campbell, he is
nonetheless portrayed as a hopeless idiot whose bigotry is based
on nothing.
Jones' entourage shows the true contradiction of racism.
His best friend is a Catholic and his bodyguard is a black man.
Father Patrick Keeley was a Paulist priest kicked out of the
priesthood for delivering sermons about the evil of the Jews.
Most ridiculous, however, is Robert Sterling Wilson, "The
Black Fuhrer of Harlem." Wilson is a black man who served as
a Japanese spy during the war. His presence among Jones' clan
alone is enough to demonstrate the contradictory and elusive mind
of a bigot. His words, however, demonstrate this even further:
"The colored people are gonna rise up in righteous
wrath, and they're gonna take over the world...The colored
people gonna have hydrogen bombs all their own," he said.
"They workin on it right now. Pretty soon gonna be Japans
turn to drop one. The rest of the colored folks gonna give
them the honor of dropping the first one."
"Where they going to drop it?" I said.
"China, most likely," he said.
"On other colored people?" I said.
He looked at me pityingly. "Who ever told you
a Chinaman was a colored man?" he said. (p.74)
Mother Night is a complex novel and cannot be fully
discussed in a paper of this length. A more traditional medium
for Vonnegut is science fiction, and the themes of government as
a destructive force to individuals, as apparent in Mother Night,
can also be seen in these works.
One of Vonnegut's best techniques in his stories is using
the future as a setting to demonstrate where our world is
heading. Welcome to the Monkey House, Vonnegut's popular
collection of short stories, contains two such stories. They warn
of the dangers of a government with too much power and show how
these powers can corrupt good men.
The title story of Welcome to the Monkey House is set in
a futuristic America with vast overpopulation. In an effort to
solve the population problem, the government required that every
citizen take pills that made them numb from the waist down,
taking all pleasure out of sex. People who refused to take the
pills were considered outlaws and termed "nothing heads."
Suicide was not only legal, but encouraged, in this
world. The story began in an Ethical Suicide Parlor, where
beautiful virgins, called suicide hostesses, would painlessly
kill you. The hostess were warned that an infamous nothing head,
Billy the Poet, was headed into town. Billy was known for
kidnapping beautiful suicide hostesses and deflowering them.
Nancy, one of the suicide hostesses, received a dirty
poem from Billy and was soon swept away at gunpoint and taken to
Billy's hideout, a nothing head haven filled with devirginized
suicide hostesses. Billy rapes Nancy very systematically, then he
begins to cry.
Nancy was infuriated, but Billy assures her that this is
a normal reaction, but that, with time, she will thank him. He
says:
"I have spent this night, and many others like it,
attempting to restore a certain amount of innocent pleasure
to the world, which is poorer in pleasure than it needs to
be." (Welcome to the Monkey House, p. 46)
Vonnegut portrays Billy the Poet as an evil hero. His
motives are doubtlessly good, yet no one can condone the methods
that he uses. Billy plight is not to create a sexual harem, but
to open the eyes of people who have been deceived for too long.
The harshness of his actions must be accepted as the only way to
accomplish his mission. Nancy has been controlled for so long
that she cannot understand the injustice that is being done to
her by the government.
"The world can't afford sex anymore." (Nancy said)
"Of course it can afford sex," said Billy. "All it
can't afford anymore is reproduction."
"Then why the laws?"
"They're bad laws," said Billy. "If you go back
through history, you'll find that people who have been most
eager to rule, to make the laws- those people have forgiven
themselves and their friends for anything and everything.
But they have been absolutely disgusted and terrified by the
natural sexuality of common men and women." (Welcome to the
Monkey House, p. 45, 46)
This serves not only as the point of this story, but also
as a strong statement by Vonnegut, revealing his thoughts on
traditional government.
One point to be made when discussing "Welcome to the
Monkey House" is Vonnegut's belief, and assertion, that
government has no place in choosing individuals' moral values.
This point is most strongly made here:
The pills were ethical because they didn't interfere
with a persons ability to reproduce, which would have been
unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of
pleasure out of sex. Thus did science and morals go hand in
hand. (Welcome to the Monkey House, p. 29)
This passage contains strong hints of sarcasm, and prove
that Vonnegut believes that science and government should stay
out of our personal lives and out of our minds.
While Billy contained all the tradition elements of
a villain in this story, he was doubtlessly the hero. Again,
Vonnegut's main character is composed of two complementary sides;
one good, and one evil; together forming the whole person. We
must view Billy, however, as essentially good in order to see
Vonnegut's point; that government with this type of moral
stronghold on society is essentially bad and will force good men
to perform evil acts in the name of freedom.
This theme is carried into another story from Welcome to
the Monkey House, entitled "Harrison Bergeron." This story, only
seven pages long, was expanded into a movie because of the
interesting questions it raises.
"Harrison Bergeron" is the story of a futuristic world in
which everyone is equal. The government regulated everything,
from intelligence to strength to beauty, and handicapped people
appropriately. The purpose was to create a completely "average"
world devoid of envy.
The strong were forced to wear bags filled with lead
balls, beautiful people wore ugly masks, and the overly
intelligent were constantly bombarded with horrible sounds in
their ear to scramble their thoughts. Harrison Bergeron was a god
in this average world. He was huge, athletic, good looking, and
a genus. The "Handicapper General," who was responsible for
regulating handicaps, could not come up with obstacles fast
enough to hold Harrison.
One day Harrison took control of the television station,
an average station with boring programs, and removed his
handicaps. He played beautiful music for the people, showed them
a beautiful woman, and ballet danced without his handicaps. He
was shot and killed. The result of his actions were nothing, as
the government sent out excruciating sounds to scramble the mind
of viewers and make them forget.
"Harrison Bergeron" is short and to the point, a near
embodiment of my thesis. Harrison can be seen as an absolute
hero, destroyed by corrupt government forces. Harrison's only
crime was taking control of the television studio, but his
motives outweighed the crime. He was shot for exposing the world
to beauty.
The reason that we see Harrison as a hero is twofold.
First, we naturally know that this is a government with too much
power. No matter what our political views, it is inherently wrong
to suppress a persons natural talent and ability. Second,
Vonnegut shows us the flaws of this world in the story, both the
flaws of the philosophy and the flaws of an average society.
The flaws of this philosophy are shown in this passage:
"...and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark
ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else.
You wouldn't like that would you?"
"I'd hate it," said Hazel.
"There you are," said George. "The minute people start
cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?"
If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to
this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren
was going off in his head.
"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Hazel.
"What would?" said George blankly. (Welcome to the
Monkey House, p. 9)
The flaw of the philosophy is shown through the inability
to truly think about it. George, Harrison's father, is described
as a man of above average intelligence. Still, his mental
handicap is so strong that he cannot think straight for more than
a few minutes. Therefore, it's impossible for people like George,
capable of seeing the evil in an average society, to think about
it long enough to discover the injustice being preformed.
Vonnegut also shows us the flaws of the average society.
So dull and mundane is this culture that no one excels and no one
fails. Imagine if you could do everything as well as everyone
else, and visa versa.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for
a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin
was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had
a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in
a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies
and Gentlemen-"
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina
to read. (Welcome to the Monkey House, p. 10)
The flaw of the average world is that no one can truly
enjoy doing or watching anything. There is no pleasure in
watching someone do something you could easily accomplish, and no
pleasure in doing something that can easily be done by the
masses. Not only is enjoyment hampered, but art is destroyed.
Expression of complex ideas and concepts is impossible in
a mundane society, such as the one described in "Harrison
Bergeron."
Kurt Vonnegut's works can be enjoyed on a variety of
levels. His novels are well constructed, prophetic, and
entertaining. The recurrent themes of government corruption and
repression in his novels would leave the reader to believe that
Vonnegut does not trust ruling factions. He warns us of the
dangers of too much government power and control of our personal
lives.
Works Cited:
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Mother Night (New York, 1966)
(Subsequent references in the body of the paper, in
parenthesis.)
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Welcome to the Monkey House
(New York, 1968)
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Last modified: March 11, 2002