文学に描かれた戦争(1) : 顔をなくしたスパイ Mother Night

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Howard W. Campbell Jr., now in jail in Jerusalem, was a notorious propagandist for Nazi Germany. At least, this is what the world believes. Actually, he was a heroic American spy, sending out coded messages in his speeches in Nazi Germany. However, only three people, including himself, knew his real status. To the rest of the world, he had been, and was, an eloquent Nazi propagandist, akin to Hitler himself. With such being the case, the moral of Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut says, is that "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Vonnegut's third novel, Mother Night, investigates how an ordinary man of good will can be enmeshed in cruelty and violence. The key to the conundrum is heroism. When you believe that you can save the world by some heroic deed, the world may indeed be saved. However, exactly where will others be when you are fighting the dragon? Some citizens may have to be sacrificed in the process of realizing peace of the world, justice, or God's will. It cannot be helped. The question is, what will you say if you are one of the sacrificed? This is the problem which faces Campbell's "nation of two," which supported Campbell throughout the war. It is composed of a couple devoted to each other. In this case, again, they are all right and saved but others are not. This, then, is the problem investigated in Mother Night. What shall we do? In his latest novel, Timequake, we can find the answer. We should "try harder to give everyone work to do, and to ensure that our children, at least, [aren't] hungry or cold or illiterate or scared to death."
恵泉女学園大学の論文

文学に描かれた戦争(1) : 顔をなくしたスパイ Mother Night

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