The Only Story of Mine Whose Moral I Know
Gray Proctor
"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."
"Look out, Kid!"
-Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
Vonnegut's work is rife with instances of lie become truth.
Howard Campbell's own double identity is a particularly strong
example, although Vonnegut's message is subtle. His actions were
an attempt to survive, but also an attempt to serve his country.
Campbell would no doubt have survived regardless - survival is
his special talent - but we aren't given any indication that he
would have become a cog in the war machine. In fact, the opposite
seems to be true. When approached by Major Wirtanen, his contact
with the DOD, he protests that he is not political and will not
help the war's progress. He was not an anti-Semite, and does not
become one. Furthermore, in at least two passages in the novel he
makes reference to a true self that he kept hidden. Campbell's
"we are" in his moral cannot be just a reference to personality.
Instead, we must take a less psychological view. Campbell
pretends to be a man who incites other men to hatred. He becomes
that man. It is in Campbell's actions and their effects, along
with his societal and legal persecution, that we find the lie
that becomes truth. As Mr. Campbell was not the only propagandist
at work in Germany in World War Two, it is for the most part
impossible to determine what measure of war and genocide guilt he
deserves. Nor can we say that he helped win the war in the sense
that those who stormed the beaches at Normandy did. But as he
became his lie to the Germans, he becomes his lie to Israel and
the United States. In Israel, he is considered a criminal against
humanity. In the United States, he is loved by a group of
Neo-Nazis and hated by almost everyone else. As far as public
perception goes, he might as well be guilty.
Something that Campbell's father-in-law Werner says shows us
another example of what happens when our masquerade is too good.
He tells Campbell that it was he who convinced him that Germany
had not gone completely insane, and further that his speeches and
Anti-Semitic rhetoric kept him from being ashamed of anything he
had done as a Nazi. While we might expect this from an officer in
the army, Werner was a civil authority, a keeper of the peace. By
Campbell's account he was a decent (though stern) man, full of
love for the beautiful things of civilization. He was not cruel.
He was mislead. And of course Campbell's propaganda does not die
with the propagandist; his words were fuel for many Anti-Semitic
groups, including the one who is to be his salvation.
The events directly preceding "Saint George and the Dragon"
(discussed later) show that the personal effects of Campbell's
lies are emptiness. Campbell has just suffered a breakdown of
sorts. Major Wirtanen has informed him that both George Kraft and
Resi Noth are Russian agents. Resi's last plea for him to show
her what to live for forces him to confront the fact that he
really doesn't have a reason to continue. Before returning to his
apartment, he spends a day simply standing on the sidewalk
because "he had no reason to move in any direction." His
curiosity, his only motivating force since the death of his wife,
had left him. Finally a policeman (authority) gets him moving
with only the words "Better be moving along, don't you think?"
There is another, lesser illustration of this theme that
deserves mention because it seems so atypical of what Vonnegut
wants to do with the book. One of his guards in Israel 'plays
dead' while Nazi soldiers remove his gold inlays. At the end of
the war, he finds himself so numb that buckling his suitcase has
as much affective impact on him as hanging Hoess: none. That is,
he finds himself dead to both hate and compassion. Vonnegut is
more interested in what happens when others believe our lies, not
in the character of self deception (beyond his appraisal of the
totalitarian mind). That is why we are confronted with the White
Christian Minutemen, people for whom Howard's rhetoric is
inspirational. These strange men are partially of his own making,
and several times he recognizes words that must have been lifted
from old speeches of his. A younger Campbell, the playwright,
would scarce have believed he could have fueled such idiocy as
this. The older man, the one in the cell, has realized something
about human nature:
"I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely
ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in,
with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so
incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and
hate. So many people wanted to believe me!"
Given this view of human nature, we see now that pretense is
not mainly a personally damaging psychological phenomenon.
Instead, play-acting like Campbell's is fuel for a fire that is
already kept under control by the barest margin. Another clue
into the nature of humanity is found in the title of the book,
a reference to a Mephistopheles' speech in Faust: "I am a part of
the part that at first was all, part of the darkness that gave
birth to light, that supercilious light which now disputes with
Mother Night her ancient rank and space, and yet can not succeed;
no matter how it struggles, it sticks to matter and can't get
free." There is danger, Vonnegut says, in all that undermines our
fragile veil of humanity, whether we do it in earnest or in jest.
We must ask ourselves why it is that Campbell's truth never
falls victim to his own lies. Simply put, he's a sane man. He can
distinguish right from wrong, and could "no more tell a lie
without noticing it than [he] could unknowingly pass a kidney
stone." (Vonnegut 124) That hallmark of the totalitarian mind,
the gear with teeth (facts) willfully filed off, is not present
within him. In his refusal to lie to himself, he is also aware of
the "cruel consequences of anyone's believing [his] lies." We are
in the dark about why, given this, Campbell decides to play the
Nazi. What we do know is that ultimately he is capable of
weighing the evidence, returning a verdict of guilty (of crimes
against himself), and sentencing himself to death.
The workings of blind chance figure prominently in this book
as well. It's just an unlikely coincidence that Campbell meets
George Kraft, the Russian spy who is to become his only friend.
After he's exposed as that Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an admirer
ambushes him near his apartment and beats him senseless. He also
gives Campbell a noose, presumably to save the Israelis the
trouble of incarcerating him. The noose goes into a garbage can.
The next day, a garbageman hangs himself with it - "but that is
another story."
In the pivotal chapter "St. George and the Dragon," the role
of chance becomes clear. As the chapter begins, O'Hare, the
soldier who captured Campbell so long ago, lies waiting for
Campbell to return to his apartment. O'Hare is full of righteous
anger and, as the title of the chapter suggests, a mythic sense
of destiny fulfilled and security in his role. He has come to
make reparations, to defeat what must surely be pure evil in
single combat. Set against the backdrop of the previous two
chapters, the reader of course recognizes the absurdity of this.
As O'Hare prepares to complete his purpose on this earth,
Campbell breaks his arm with a pair of fire-tongs. The manner in
which Vonnegut delivers this news is flat, matter-of-fact.
Afterwards Howard delivers a sermon on the dangers of unreserved
hate, but I think it is misleading to see this battle as a clash
of ideologies. Campbell strikes to defend himself, and prevails,
and that's it, and it doesn't mean so much apart from the facts.
It's not the sort of thing that provides a convenient hook to
hang a lesson on, but it shows us something about the stories we
use to explain our lives. In the first place, stories are human
constructions, fictions we use to help us grasp the complexities
of the external world in an attempt to forge a meaning. They are
not the world or its events. The reader, who perhaps has more
perspective than the unfortunate Mr. O'Hare, recognizes his
mythologizing for what it is - a desperate attempt at direction
in a life that O'Hare considers meaningless. Campbell recognizes
this too. He's lost his knack for art of this sort. "It's all
I've seen, all I've been through.that makes it damn near
impossible for me to say anything. I've lost the knack of making
sense. I speak gibberish to the civilized world, and it responds
in kind." (Vonnegut 96)
Vonnegut also shows how events, usually chance ones, often
confound our attempts to coat reality with a thin candy shell of
meaning. It would've been a good story, though a false one. but
in the end it just didn't pan out. Campbell's own attempt to make
sense of the world and his place in it dies with the other
citizen of his 'Nation of Two'. Poor Campbell. We really must
feel pity for him. His nation returns, briefly, but it's a lie.
His other chance to find a sliver of meaning, in his friendship,
is mostly a lie too. All the worse for an artist who "admires
form," things with "a beginning, a middle, and an end - and,
whenever possible, a moral, too." (Vonnegut 136) The beauties of
form and sense, of a coherent life, are denied him. He is badly
used, by his country, by Germany, and by the Soviets. He likens
himself to a hog in a Chicago stockyard. They find a use for
every part of him. His art, a vehicle for lie; his love,
pornography; his memories even perverted by Helga's little sister
Resi.
How can we place this novel in some kind of historical
context? We can show how it is part of a larger movement, as
Dickstein does, and then take that movement as representative of
changing world views and values. We can also show how the book is
an example of the mood that events of the era generated. We would
then take the book as a product of a person who lived with these
events. The former approach focuses on change within a cultural
aggregate, while the latter is a cultural barometer. A final
possible approach is to interpret the events in the novel as
representative of specific events. Using such a blunt instrument
is perhaps a disservice to a writer as complex as Vonnegut; it
isn't likely that he is retelling a specific political story. In
defense of this approach, I will say that when interpretations of
this sort are possible it is because the story has already been
told. That is, the same moral lessons can be drawn from the
instances of actors on the stage of history. Knowing humans, it
is entirely possible that someone has given history this
'reading' and not impossible that the author encountered it,
independently or second hand.
With that brief digression on methodology behind us, we can
now turn to the substantive issues. Dickstein is primarily
concerned with Vonnegut as a "structural" black humorist. This is
so because of his fascination with forms and what they tell us
about perceptions. They are, he states, a link to the social
whole that does not rely on any direct allusion. (Dickstein 95)
The book also exemplifies the awakening critical spirit
As a product of the mood of the early sixties, Mother Night
speaks of disillusionment and an understanding that the world may
be insane. Campbell, as I've said, is a man badly used by his
country, yet he never manages to hate the U.S. This sounds a lot
like the Rosenbergs, who were put to death in the name of
anti-communist hysteria but never attacked 'the system'. What
Campbell's case shares with that of the Rosenbergs' is that both
are examples of things that our country just doesn't do. To
convict innocents just because of their politics! And Campbell's
were, of course, only pretended for the benefit of the war. The
sixties and late fifties also saw the expansion of America's
imperialist role within her sphere of influence. Sometimes real
U.S. foreign policy was as questionable (or more so) as
Campbell's incidence. When we use terms like 'the government',
it's easy to forget that real people are behind the scenes and
that they were elected by the public. Vonnegut answers the
question "What sort of people are we that do this?" in his
assessment of human nature and by showing what sort of men
Eichmann and Goebbles might be if one were to meet them. When two
of our favorite myths - American exceptionalism and the basic
goodness of mankind -- collapse, they leave a vacuum behind. What
can we believe in?
Well, we can certainly believe that the world makes no
sense. We can know, to some extent, how we got to the sixties. We
have historians for that. But why did four thousand or so years
of history end up with two superpowers sitting atop nuclear
powderkegs capable of destroying the world many times over? And
why in God's name does Kennedy insist that our safety lies in
continually skirting the edge of war? Why is our best response to
this threat a doctrine of mutually assured destruction? It
doesn't make much sense. With things poised as they were, it's no
wonder that Vonnegut was concerned with the workings of chance.
One bad weekend, or one fight with the wife, or one crazy
general, and Dr. Strangelove could become terrible reality. The
stories that conservative America used to explain the Cold War
era no doubt sounded a bit too much like The Crucible to certain
ears. The alternative was no doubt heart-rending to civilized
people. At least some must have concluded that the world was
insane.
Finally, I'd like to look at an instance from our own past
from which we can draw similar morals. The progressive
internationalists of Wilson's day were as idealistic as Campbell,
although with different emphases. Still, we see the emphasis on
Truth, Good, and Idea, with little time for skulking around in
the domains of reality, politics, or (good/evil). The legacy of
that era is not, of course, the League of Nations. America, in
those years, began to involve itself in world affairs in a way
that is distinctly American. Our obsession with our own
(perceived) purity and that of our ideology, combined with an
inabilty to compromise, set the tone for this century's foreign
policy. This same idea (not new to the internationalists, but in
a new context) lead to such travesties as the Bay of Pigs
invasion, support for various coups de etat, and the
Anti-Communist hysteria. Similarly, Campbell engages in moral
ambiguity for his principles. Only later in life does he find out
what the consequences of unquestioning hatred and dogmatic
loyalty to ideology are.
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Last modified: Jun 27, 1999