Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut - Printable Version

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Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut - Ruby Urquart - March 8, 2020

From Goodreads:
Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all


Questions:
1. Do you believe in "The end justifies the means"?
2. What defines morality and what is moral? Is it society? Is it your personal compass?
3. Do you believe that there's inherently good and there's evil people, or that there afe different perceptives of what people are like?

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This is a discussion thread for people who have read or are reading the book in question. With that in mind, there are likely to be spoilers throughout. However, in the event of major twists or “how it ends”, please wrap content in spoiler tags.

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RE: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut - Ruby Urquart - March 8, 2020

I loooove this book, it might be one of my favourite books actually.

I like morally ambiguous characters because I think morality is an ambiguous concept. The narrator is also unreliable, if you think of it. Supposedly only he and the president of the US knew that he was a spy, so we as readers have to trust him that he's telling us the truth. I saw this as what is true, anyway? Sometimes we hear some opinion and trust it to be true and right. Kinda like political beliefs. Everyone thinks their political opinion is the right one, but someone on the other side of the spectrum will say the opposite and in his reality he's right, so who's right in the end?

I like how this book basically says that what is wrong is to believe that you're right and the good guy. I love this quote:
“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting…but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side” (Chapter 43).

The bolder part spoke to me because I read this book during a time when I was beginning yo question political correctness. Here in Greece, we have the tendency to call fascist any opinion that doesn't agree with ours. So we have left wing people calling right wing people fascist and vice versa. I believe this is too black and white and that the way to ensure that we won't turn into hateful nazis is to have the self awareness to understand that as humans, we have this capacity of becoming such people. Kinda like a Jungian shadow self.

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