Justice

“Because I hated you so much, I studied you. I listened to everything you said; never missed a broadcast. Did you know that until this very moment, nothing would have delighted me more than to prove that you were a spy—to see you shot. Now, I couldn’t care less if you were a spy. Do you know why?”

“No”

“Because now I know that even if you were a spy, you could never serve the enemy as well as you served us. All of the ideals that made me proud of being a Nazi, they came not from Hitler…but from you. You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane.”

0:30:30

Campbell’s father-in-law tells this to him when Campbell goes to visit their home after the news arrives that Helga has died. Campbell realizes for the first time in the movie that his greatest enemies may be those that are very close or closely related to him. This realization proves to be painfully true near the end of the movie. 

The power of words is illustrated in this passage. Campbell's job as a propaganda writer for the Nazis was to write speeches that upheld the Nazi principles and views that would be broadcast on the radio for all to hear. However, his job as an American spy was to insert seemingly random pauses and coughs. The meaning of these he never understood, thus the secret messages he was sending out he himself did not know. For him, all he could know and control were the words. And being the talented writer that he was, his propaganda was extremely effective; later in the movie when he sees his speech replayed at a Nazi meeting, he is shocked by the brutality of his own words. He sees for himself the person that he was to the world minus four people, including himself. The words that he wrote for the Nazis were more powerful than any secret message that he was sending out. He informed a few military powers in America, but inspired every Nazi in Germany. It is at this point in the movie that he stops writing, having realized the terrifying power of his words. 

Campbell had only meant to do what he was told by his superiors. Write propaganda. Pause here. Cough here. However, his simple obedience of orders earned him credit of a portion of the six million humans killed throughout the war. It is this truth that his writings fueled and propelled the Nazi movement and Holocaust that leads him to turn himself in at the end and ultimately commit suicide--a justice he feels he deserved.

Q: What justice do you think Campbell deserved?

Howard W. Campbell Jr. : The Last "Free" American

"What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction." The moment I chose is this moment where he is standing still and alone in the dark for hours along with the following scene where he is sitting in his wrecked apartment playing with the chess piece he made.


Howard Campbell is trapped at the end of the film. He spent his entire adult life pretending to be something that he wasn't. He joined the Nazi regime in order to spy for the American government and through his radio program and adamant support for the Nazi cause, he became one of the most famous Nazi leaders in Berlin. However, only three Americans actually know that he is actually a spy, one of those being the president, Franklin Roosevelt. Howard sacrifices his entire life for the sake of the American government and while he was one of the most crucial American agents, the majority of the world believes him to be a Nazi. This serves to ruin him at the end of the war. There is no public announcement that he was really an American spy, no coming home party, no reward for his sacrifice because it is much too confidential. He is forced into solitude and hiding essentially. He is hated by Americans and is forced out of his home because his life is being threatened. It is ironic hat the only people he can find safety with is with a American Nazi group, the very thing he isn't.
When the war ended, he was frozen. He couldn't find refuge in the American government because they were required to keep his role in the war a secret. However, he also could not find real refuge with the German government or even American Nazi's because that was not where his true loyalty resided. This is where the significance of the chess pieces come into play.  Like a pawn, he was tossed back and forth by higher forces and once the "game" or war was over, he was of no use to them anymore and he remained trapped in this false Nazi identity that he and the government created.

Q: Since, only 3 other people knew about Howard's secret identity a a spy, do you think its possible that Howard could have imagined his "blue fairy god mother" and the entire espionage mission? Do you think he could have imagined that he was an american spy while in reality he had become one of the most prominent Nazi leaders of the war?

Mother Night

“I took several steps down the sidewalk when something happened…it was not guilt that froze me. I had taught myself never to feel guilt. I wasn’t the fear of death—I had taught myself to think of death as a friend. It was not the thought of being unloved that froze me—I had taught myself to do without love. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction.”

1:39:03

In this scene Campbell stops in the middle of the street after he comes to a realization that he has nowhere to go. He grasps that he has nothing to live for anymore, as everything he has stood for has seemed to him a lie. When the two people he thought he could trust turn out to both be spies, Campbell essentially stops believing in anything. He concludes that the only way to make things better is to cleanse himself of his past, which involves facing trial in Israel. Campbell is intent on setting things right once he realizes the true weight of his actions, no matter the consequences are for him.

Vonnegut seems to have a similar message in Mother Night as in Slaughterhouse Five—we cannot ever truly cleanse ourselves of the effects war may have on us. As no matter what Billy does, he is constantly reminded of and goes back to moments in the war, the same seems true of Campbell--even after starting a new life in New York the war comes back to haunt him. When he and Resi finally start to live together happily, Campbell discovers she is actually a Russian spy, as well as finding out that George Kraft has had intentions of turning him in all along. Campbell comes to a conclusion that although he can never escape his actions, he can go to face them. Along with the newspaper article and the all of the eventual publicity his name receives soon afterwards, it seems that in the end it seems we never truly can rid ourselves of the war. This is a truth even Campbell seems to recognizes, as hanging himself seems to be the only way out.

Q: What would Campbell’s fate have been had he not commited suicide? Would he be able to live with himself, provided he has finally come to terms with the weight of his actions?

You are what you pretend to be

24:08

I suppose the moral here is this: You must be careful what you pretend to be, because in the end you are what you pretend to be.

I'm pretty sure I've heard this quote before, which might be why it stuck out to me. This self-proclaimed moral of the story relates to an obvious theme of identity in the movie. Primarily, Howard W. Campbell identifies neither with any Americans or Germans, besides Helga. At some point in the movie it even says that "he may, in fact, be a citizen of nowhere at all." Even his status as a spy is disputed because of his talent for shmoozing Nazi power players and his convincing radio broadcast. Helga - or is it Resi? - is German, but works for the Russians. George Kraft, or Potipov, is also a Russian spy. Campbell becomes so immersed in his German life that it becomes his real life, and he can receive neither recognition nor award from either side for his efforts. The more he succeeded at being Herr Campbell, the less he could be an American. This quote is not only relevant in the novel, but has remained applicable since Mother Night was published in 1961.

Q: At what point in the movie was Campbell no longer pretending?

Identity Crisis

1:08:44

"I am not Helga."

What?! For a second, I thought I was watching Jerry Springer. This completely caught me off guard which is why it stands out to me as an important moment in the film.

Convinced the woman brought to him was his wife Helga, Howard Campbell is shocked to hear from her that she is not who he believes she is. She claims she is Helga's sister, Resi,but the audience later finds out this is not true. This particular moment stood out to me because it ties an awkward moment for the audience into a recurring theme for the film. This theme is identity.

Many of the characters play the same character in multiple roles. Campbell was an American, an American-German, and a German double-agent. Resi was a German-American and a Russian spy. George Kraft was a Russian spy acting as an American. All these hats that everyone put on shows the audience that other people will fall victim to believing that someone is who they pretend to be. This directly relates to a line Campbell narrated 24 minutes into the film: "I suppose the moral here is: 'You must be careful what you pretend to be, because in the end, you are what you pretend to be.'" Campbell's pretending to be a Nazi propagandist led the American public to believe that he helped put millions of Jews into camps, which he did.

Q: Could someone who acted in the way Howard Campbell did during the war, providing intelligence to the Allies and spread Nazi propaganda, be considered a war hero and a war criminal?

So it....goes?

1:07:00

"People should be changed by world wars. Otherwise, what are world wars for?"

Though Campbell is only saying this to assure "Helga" he has not changed in an unexpected or negative way, he is stating a point emphasized in Slaughterhouse-Five as well. During the war, Campbell was an anti-Semitic Nazi. However, only after fleeing Germany and letting go of his identity, he realizes his actions during the war were wrong and unwarranted. Of course, he only comes to this revelation after the damage has been done and he is suffering--after the war is over. So, for him the war is never truly over or in the past. He is constantly plagued by what he did, and he will never be able to escape it. Vonnegut might have been trying to say that wars are meant to change people forever; they're meant to essentially never just be history for those involved. In Slaughterhouse-five, the Tralfamadorians have wars all the time, but they choose to focus on the good in their lives, as if the bad never happened. However, humans cannot do that because wars are crucial moments in determining who they really are. The choices Campbell made and the consequences he had to live with changed him and there was no turning back. How could someone just say "so it goes" and move on, especially when they are literally not the same person anymore?

Q: Does Vonnegut's "so it goes" attitude apply to Mother Night? Didn't Campbell surrender & then commit suicide because he could not move on?

-Madhu Singh

7,000,000,000 seven billion 7^9

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-10-30/world-population-hits-seven-billion/51007670/1

"On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day. During that same day, 10,000 persons, on an average, will have starved to death or died from malnutrition. So it goes. In addition 123,000 persons will die for other reasons. So it goes. This leaves a net gain of about 192,000 each day in the world. The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.

'I suppose they will all want dignity, ' I said.

'I suppose,' said O'Hare."

So we have, and yes they do. Our population is unfathomably large and growing exponentially. Hundreds of thousands of lives come and go each day, and it is really hard to realize or even conceive of this fact. Thus when a massacre occurs like Dresden and World War II it is an even more difficult subject to discuss. Death is always a sensitive topic but there can never be growth or any justification of those lives sacrificed if we cannot openly discuss and comfort one another about such issues. All seven billion of us on Earth do most definitely want dignity, and revolutions such as the one in Egypt earlier this year will turn up at every place that dignity is denied. Rather than perpetuate a cynical kill or be killed Darwinist mindset, there need to be more cooperative discussions and compromises quite soon. On average now that the world's population has doubled, one can estimate for every bomb dropped twice as many lives will be lost. Thus every war from now on will murder twice as many innocent people, and if we cannot realize these facts and talk about them we may be doomed to repeat history.

Q: What does the phrase "If you're ever in Cody, Whyoming, just ask for Wild Bob." mean to Billy Pilgrim now that the war is over and Wild Bob is dead?

Horse Pitiers

“Billy asked them in English what it was they wanted, and they at once scolded him in English for the condition of the horse. They made Billy get out of the wagon and come look at the horses. When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tear. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war” (197-small book)

While reminiscing on his life, Billy considers that if given the optimistically selective mentality of the Tralfamadorians, he would choose the moment while snoozing in the back of a wagon, as the happiest moment of his life. His musing is soon interrupted by concerned voices. Billy then notices a couple pitying the state of the neglected horses of his wagon. They force Billy to observe the horse’s pathetic condition. When suddenly exposed to the miserable horses he bursts into tears, and claims “he hadn’t cried about anything else in the war”.

This sudden, unexpected, impulsive response made me wonder what triggered such contrasting emotional states inside Billy’s mind. Seemingly minutes before, he was relishing in blissful thought, all to be abruptly replaced by a surge of tears. This response reveals just how confused and abnormal Billy’s emotional state of mind has fallen victim to. He fails to notice the obvious death and misery of his surroundings. This enforces Billy’s inadequate credibility as a factual narrator. As the war lingers around him, Billy becomes oblivious and uncomprehending to just exactly what he is experiencing. I think the author uses this instance as example for how emotional the war is for these soldiers without glorifying or justifying war. Throughout the novel, Billy is presented as a passive, inexpressive, and detached character. He seems to go through moments as an observer of his own life and never really attaches his emotions to what should be a traumatizing experience. In this moment, his character is allowed to evoke feelings of sympathy and pity. Vonnegut strategically makes one of the few emotional events in this book circa horses and a random couple, rather then perhaps the bombing of Dresden. Thus the reader may not be swayed emotionally to sympathize with killings of war, but still can recognize sympathy towards the individuals involved.

Q: Why do you think Billy claims this moment to be his first moment he cries about the war?

Jesus and the Time Traveler

"The time-traveler in the book went back to Bible times to find out one thing in particular: Whether or not Jesus had really died on the cross, or whether he had been taken down while still alive, whether he had really gone on living. The hero had a stethoscope along." 260

* * *

The time-traveler's curiosity about Jesus' death status raises and interesting question; why does it matter if Jesus had died on the cross or whether he lived? No matter what, people would have believed in Christianity. This is an example of Vonnegut's fatalistic theme throughout the novel. It didn't matter if the future technology of a stethoscope proved that Jesus' heart was still beating and his resurrection was not a complete revival of a dead person. Those who believed he was the Son of God would have deemed it a miracle anyhow and the world would still have Christianity. The knowledge gained by the time traveler would not have changed anything because the world where he comes from believes Jesus Christ is divine. As it was, "the Son of God was dead as a doornail" when the time traveler checked his heartbeat.

Why does Billy never attempt to change the past when he time-travels? Does he believe that free-will does not exist?

Snoozing...

"Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones- to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. If this sort of selectivity had been possible for Billy, he might have chosen as his happiest moment his sun drenched snooze in the back of the wagon." (195 Dell edition-middle of chapter 8)

This passage occurs two days after the end of the war. Billy and the other American prisoners of war found an abandon wagon resembling a coffin, equipped with two old horses and are returning to the slaughterhouse for war souvenirs. Billy falls asleep in the back of the wagon and claims that to be the happiest moment of his life.

This passage stood out to me because it seems to me that someone should have much happier moments in their life than taking a nap in a coffin. For instance, the day he married his wife, the day his children were born, etc. I understand that after being a prisoner of war, one would inevitably be elated when the war was over but the fact that that moment was Billy's happiest speaks volumes about Billy. I believe that Billy has PTSD and has not been able to cope with that happened to him in the war.

It's ironic that the happiest moment of Billy's life is when he's in a coffin-shaped bed among the ruins of Dresden. There's nothing beautiful or pleasant about his surroundings. The coffin seems to resemble the fact that Billy, in a way, died in Dresden. The war changed him and left sort of an empty shell. The coffin could also be representative of the lives lost in the Dresden firebombing.

Why did Billy feel so compelled to tell Rumfoord that he was in Dresden during the firebombing if he didn't also want to tell Rumfoord his story?

-Molly

So Long Forever

            “The guards drew together instinctively, rolled their eyes. They experimented with one expression and then another, said nothing, though their moths were often open. They looked like a silent film of a barbershop quartet.

‘So long forever,’ they might have been singing, ‘old fellows and pals; So long forever, old sweethearts and pals—God bless ‘em—” (227)

The night of the bombing, Billy was hiding down in the underground meat locker with the other American prisoners of war. There were only four guards with them—only four guards that would be surviving the night.

Billy watches the guards as they, along with everyone else, wait in terror for the bombs to finish falling. The guards are at a loss of words, which is what ends up reminding Billy of the silent movie of a barbershop quartet; this illustrates the author’s initial warning from chapter one that there isn’t anything intelligent to say about a massacre.

This moment is preceded with a build up of different scenes of Billy and Valencia’s anniversary party, where Billy is overcome with uncontrollable tears when the barbershop quartet sings. In the moment he can’t understand why he’s so affected by the performance, but eventually he is able to look back and see that in his memory the destruction of Dresden is denoted by this image of a barbershop quartet silent film. Seeing four men with their mouths open reminds him too clearly of the four guards that night of the bombing that his emotions finally reveal his grief over the death and destruction of the war.

The awkwardness of the guards seems childish in the way that they roll their eyes and experiment in trying to find the right facial expression for such a moment. They don’t know the words to say, the feelings to express, and in their ignorance they find the innocence and vulnerability that comes with war during times of mass and imminent death. This again references the subtitle of this novel, The Children’s Crusade. Vonnegut portrays this moment through not the use of words that incite emotions of danger and fear but through a comparison to a barbershop quartet singing “So long forever” in a silent film; he thus creates the perfect atmosphere for a truer understanding of what war does to men.

Q: This is one of the few times that Billy is presenting a memory purely as a memory rather than a time-traveled experience. What is the significance of this specific event being remembered “shimmeringly” rather than just another time jump?

Time Travel

Billy's outward listlessness was a screen . The listlessness concealed a mind which was fizzing and flashhing thrillingly . It was preparing letters and lectures about the flying saucers, the negligibility of death , and the true nature of death. ( 243)

The quote gives us an overview of what the narrator describes Billy's lifestyle as: All in one moment. As he lays there unconscious and appears braindead to everyone around him his mind is busy chaotically zig-zagging through past, present , and future moments of his life. He even mentions how he revisits some of these moments more than once . Billy is in and out of every moment whenever he closes his eyes, but he never seems to be in his current reality of time. Billy says he has seen his death several times and he "always dies on February 13, 1976"(183) . He gives a brief description during these pages of how he dies. In my mind , I expected more of a detailed description of his death towards the end of the novel, but he failed to mention this moment ever again . Billy keeps living all in one moment even after his death. However, for Billy dead or alive his description of life is all the same to him . He considers one of his happiest moments to be in a " sundrenched snooze in the back of a wagon" (249 ). Billy doesn't seem to mind being dead or alive because life was meaningless to him long before his death (123) .

Q: Why is Billy so accepting and conformed to the way he dies ? is it because of the Tralfamadorian mind set he has acquired ? or is it because of the war and the outlook on life it gave him ?

War and Vegetables

“Billy's outward listlessness was a screen. The listlessness concealed a mind which was fizzing and flashing thrillingly... 'Why don’t they let him die?' he asked Lily.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘That’s not a human being anymore. Doctors are for human beings. They should turn him over to a veterinarian or a tree surgeon. They’d know what to do. Look at him! That’s life, according to the medical profession. Isn’t life wonderful?’” (243-244)

This comes from the section where Billy is in the hospital after his plane crash. Professor Rumfoord says that he is no longer a human since he is just like a vegetable laying there. I think that in this section, Vonnegut is showing the things war can cause, things like PTSD. Billy's condition could be from the plane crash, but it seems as though it is mostly from what he saw in the war. Rumfoord's inability to write about the Dresden bombing in his history book seems to parallel Vonnegut's inability to write about Dresden, as he describes to us in the first chapter. Even though they can't write about it for different reasons, it seems very similar. Rumfoord also seems to have a different take on life than in the rest of the book, with its "so it goes" attitude. He wants Billy to be gone, just because he doesn't talk to anyone, it isn't as simple as it seems from the outside, to Billy he is traveling all over the place, very much alive, and his life is wonderful, as Rumfoord sarcastically states.

Q: Why did Billy wait until now to think up his plans for telling everyone "about the flying saucers, the negligibility of death, and the true nature of time"? Why did he feel the need to wait, and why did he decide that after his plane crash and hospital stay that that was the right time?

"There's Something Happening Here..."

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.

            Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died too. So it goes.

            And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes” (210). (Beginning of Ch. 10)

This quote contains many of the themes and motifs that are present throughout the novel. Once again at the beginning of Chapter 10 we see the story switch from Billy’s account of what’s happening back to an unknown narrator. This goes along with the theme of narrative vs. non-narrative. We also have the use of “so it goes” multiple times. But, the most prominent feature of this quote is the way the author chooses to tie past events with current ones. We are given descriptions of the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King, as well as the mention of the Vietnam War, which lead us to believe that we are now in the year 1968. Vonnegut intentionally moved forward in time to this particular year to show that there is still unnecessary violence taking place in the world. Despite the horror and destruction that was witnessed during World War II we have failed to learn our lesson and continue to make the same mistakes. The casual tone seems to indicate that there is nothing that can be done and it’s just the way things are. Once again this is intentional to force the reader to consider if there really is nothing that can be done, or if we must somehow take action.  

Q: What did Vonnegut hope to accomplish by switching back and forth between a narrator and Billy?

-Jonathan Virdell 

Bugs Trapped in Amber

“Where am I?” said Billy Pilgrim.

“Trapped in another blob of amber, Mr. Pilgrim. We are where we have to be just now…”

“How--how did I get here?”

“It would take another Earthling to explain it to you. Earthlings are great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided. I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”

“You sound to me as though you don’t believe in free will, “ said Billy Pilgrim.

(pg 85) End of chapter 4

Billy’s conversation with the Tralfamadorians here reinforces the Tralfamadorians’ concept of time—instead of viewing life as linear, they believe it to be a collection of moments, emphasizing once again that people are just like bugs trapped in amber. There is nothing they can do about what is to happen to them; they can only learn to accept it. This Tralfamadorian concept of time reflects Billy’s own concept of time, and helps to explain why Billy has become “unstuck” in time. Since time, to Tralfamadorians, is merely a collenction of moments, Billy is able to move around in these moments throughout his life and transport himself to another time and place.

This new view of time draws light on the difficulty or recounting traumatic experiences, and serves as an outlet for Billy to make sense of all he has experienced in the war. It reflects his belief that we cannot control our fate; we must learn to simply move on when experiencing something such as death. It also explains the Tralfamadorians’ notion of free will—they reject it completely, believing that everyone’s fate is predetermined and there is no use asking questions. We are all bugs trapped in amber, and a moment in time simply is. This idea helps Billy recount his time at war, as it leads him to believe that all that has experienced was meant to happen the way it happened.

Q: How does the Tralfamadorian view of time help us make sense of the events of the novel? Would we have a different understanding of the story if it were all told in order?