Literary Devices in Mother Night
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Campbell is writing to us from his jail cell in Israel. It's 1961, and from his vantage point—which is limited—he gets a sense of the shiny and modern glopped on top of the very, very old:I am...
Narrator Point of View
Right off the bat, Vonnegut tells us not to trust Campbell: he's a playwright, which means he lies for a living. More than once, Campbell's quick wit and penchant for verbal flare call his reliabil...
Genre
War DramaThis is not your typical war drama. For one thing, the war is over. For another, our main character never even saw any fighting during WWII. Actually, everybody in this novel is a spy; nob...
Tone
Campbell thinks he's cool as a cucumber, but he's got a lot of feels. And he wants us to feel his feels, which is why he languishes in the tiny details of his experiences. No, really—we get a lot...
Writing Style
Some of the cleanest, most energetic lines in this text are also the most poetic:I am behind bars. I am behind bars in a nice new jail in old Jerusalem. I am awaiting a fair trial for my war crimes...
What's Up With the Title?
As a text, Mother Night is pretty self-aware. It even offers us an explanation of its own title, if we look outside the borders of the story a bit.Remember how Vonnegut plays at being the meticulou...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said, 'This is my own, my native land!'Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'dAs...
What's Up With the Ending?
That's it? Campbell's just going to kill himself? After everything he's been through, after everything we've watched him go through, after all those escapes, he's just going to off himself?Why did...
Tough-o-Meter
Mother Night offers pretty straightforward prose and a clipped pace. There's no tricky business here, folks. On the other hand, Vonnegut's narrator is a writer who prides himself on a good turn of...
Plot Analysis
Alone, imprisoned, misunderstood: that's the set-up we get when we find Campbell in an Israeli jail cell awaiting trial for war crimes during WWII. Campbell, our unreliable narrator, is writing the...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
This tale is a sort of twisty version of voyage and return, since it's being related to us as a memoir. The anticipation stage comes out of order for us as readers, but know this: Campbell starts o...
Three-Act Plot Analysis
Campbell's hanging out in Israel writing a memoir. He revisits the time he spent hanging out in New York City while he dealt with the aftermath of what he did in Germany: he was a spy for the U.S.,...
Trivia
During World War II, Vonnegut was captured by German forces and forced to work in a POW camp. The bright side of this arrangement was that by being forced to live underground, Vonnegut ended up sur...
Steaminess Rating
There's a lot of talk about sex in this book, a handful of references to pornography, and even one extended transcript of a passionate night (written dispassionately, though). The main thing to kee...
Allusions
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (Ed note.11)Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (20.14)William Blake, "The Question Answered" (23.7-9) Cervantes, Don Quixote (30.22-23)Joseph Goebbels (1.36)Adolf Eichma...