How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
'And the music was always stopping in the middle,' he said, 'and then there was an announcement. All day long, music and announcements.'
'Very modern,' I said.
He closed his eyes, remembered gropingly. 'There was one announcement that was always crooned, like a nursery rhyme. Many times a day it came. It was the call for the Sonderkommando.'
'Oh?' I said.
'Leichentriiger zu Wache,' he crooned, his eyes still closed.
Translation: 'Corpse-carriers to the guardhouse.' In an institution in which the purpose was to kill human beings by the millions, it was an understandably common cry. (2.17-22)
Sick. The ideological mindset that makes total war permissible is also the foundation for developing an entire institution designed to systematically kill millions of people. On top of that, the Nazis are trying to normalize the whole thing by setting horror to crooning music and sing-song orders. Nasty.
Quote #2
'How would they dare?' he said. 'I was such a pure and terrifying Aryan that they even put me in a special detachment. Its mission was to find out how the Jews always knew what the S.S. was going to do next. There was a leak somewhere, and we were out to stop it.' He looked bitter and affronted, remembering it, even though he had been that leak.
'Was the detachment successful in its mission?' I said.
'I'm happy to say,' said Arpad, 'that fourteen S.S. men were shot on our recommendation. Adolf Eichmann himself congratulated us.'
'You met him, did you?' I said.
'Yes' said Arpad, 'and I'm sorry I didn't know at the time how important he was.'
'Why?' I said.
'I would have killed him,' said Arpad. (3.21-27)
Arpad's experience of WWII is unique. Like Campbell, he's a pretend Nazi. Unlike Campbell, he's a combat officer. Here', we're getting a peek at how Arpad would use his authority to kill other Nazis: he would say that they were being too friendly to Jews. Arpad is the actual mole the higher-ups are looking for, but he maneuvers things to protect himself and take out some S.S. men in the process.
Quote #3
He never told me what the book meant to him, and I never asked him. All he ever said to me about it was that it wasn't for children, that I wasn't to look at it.
So, of course, I looked at it every time I was left alone. There were pictures of men hung on barbed wire, mutilated women, bodies stacked like cord-wood—all the usual furniture of world wars. (7.4-5)
Campbell's first exposure to war is this text from his childhood. We have two takeaways from this snippet. This first is the harsh description of the ravages of war as "furniture." It's jarring, but it feels sadly true. The cruelty shouldn't be commonplace, but in war it is. The second is that Campbell sees this as a child, after his father says that it isn't for children. Why is this noteworthy? Because it reminds us that war and its traumas happen to children, too—even though it's not for them.
Quote #4
I got away with them because I was an American agent all through the war. My broadcasts carried coded information out of Germany.
The code was a matter of mannerisms, pauses, emphases, coughs, seeming stumbles in certain key sentences. Persons I never saw gave me my instructions, told me in which sentences of a broadcast the mannerisms were to appear. (8.3-4)
Not all warfare is about guns blazing and bombs dropping. This story focuses on participants like Campbell, whose involvement is less militant but no less real. Campbell's propaganda, whatever his reasons were for producing it, inspires nasty people to do nasty things.
Quote #5
'You made her happy,' he said.
'I hope so,' I said. 'That made me hate you more,' he said. 'Happiness has no place in war.' (18.79-81)
Harsh. But true? We're not sure. We do really like all those stories about finding a silver lining even in the darkest clouds, but we can see where Noth is going with this, and we're not on board.
Quote #6
'What does it mean?' said Helga.
'Maybe they declared war last night,' I said. She tightened her fingers on my arm convulsively.
'You don't really think so, do you?' she said. She thought it was possible. 'A joke,' I said. 'Some kind of holiday, obviously.' (23.25-28)
When you've survived WWII, it's really easy to believe that another huge war can start at any time. What's more disturbing is the notion that patriotic displays convince people that war is imminent, even if that's not necessarily the case. Propaganda does real damage, folks.
Quote #7
We saw a Veterans' Day parade down Fifth Avenue, and I heard Resi's laugh for the first time. It was nothing like Helga's laugh, which was a rustling thing. Resi's laugh was bright, melodious. What struck her so funny was the drum majorettes, kicking at the moon, twitching their behinds, and twirling chromium dildos. 'I've never seen such a thing before,' she said to me. 'War must be a very sexy thing to Americans.' (24.60-61)
This comment is actually a bigger zinger than it seems at first glance. Think about it: Vonnegut fought in WWII. Other than Pearl Harbor, the U.S. was basically untouched by warfare stateside. If war seems sexy to Americans at home who didn't participate in it, it's because they only got the see the parades, not the hangings, rapes, starvation, bombing, and gunfire. The scantily clad women kicking up a storm in a war pageant indicate that the population has no clue—or that it wants to forget—the real face of war.
Quote #8
Watching Kraft pop away at that target, I understood its popularity for the first time. The amateurishness of it made it look like something drawn on the wall of a public lavatory; it recalled the stink, diseased twilight, humid resonance, and vile privacy of a stall in a public lavatory—echoed exactly the soul's condition in a man at war. (28.10)
Did Campbell just compare the human soul in wartime to a poo-stained public restroom? He did. That observation accompanies his realization about why the target he designed using Jewish stereotypes was so successful. Why else would people be so on board if their souls hadn't been turned to toilets during the war?
Quote #9
Colonel Frank Wirtanen had the impudent pink-baby look that victory and an American combat uniform seemed to produce in so many older men.
He beamed at me and he shook my hand warmly, and he said, 'Well—what did you think of that war, Campbell?'
'I would just as soon have stayed out of it' I said.
'Congratulations,' he said. 'You lived through it, anyway. A lot of people didn't you know.'
'I know,' I said. 'My wife, for instance.' (32.14-18)
It takes all kinds to make warfare go 'round, and Wirtanen embodies the happy sort that thrives in war. Not that he's happy about the carnage, but he's the sort of man who fell out of a Currier and Ives painting and into an army uniform. He's the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed version of war.
Quote #10
It's a big enough job just burying the dead, without trying to draw a moral from each death,' he said. 'Half the dead don't even have names. I might have said you were a good soldier.' (32.41)
Don't go looking for morals in a postmodern novel, and don't go hunting for meaning in war. Really. It'll only hurt your heart. If you have to, though, think of it this way: this line could be a reminder that tending to the dead provides meaning enough.