matliner.blogg.se - Mother night book

#MOTHER NIGHT BOOK TRIAL#

In early 1945, just before the Red Army invades Berlin, Campbell visits his in-laws one last time. Campbell is extremely distraught when he hears that the camp Helga visited in Crimea has been overrun by Soviet troops and she is presumed dead. Campbell never discovers, nor is he ever told, the information that he is sending.Ībout halfway through the war, Helga goes to the Eastern Front to entertain German troops. – are part of the coded information he is passing to the American Office of Strategic Services. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, all of the idiosyncrasies of Campbell's speeches – deliberate pauses, coughing, etc. Once the war starts, Campbell begins to make his way up through Joseph Goebbels' propaganda organization, eventually becoming the "voice" of broadcasts aimed at converting Americans to the Nazi cause. Campbell rejects the offer, but Wirtanen quickly adds that he wants Campbell to think about it. He is politically apathetic, caring only for his art and his wife Helga, who is also the starring actress in all of his plays.Ĭampbell encounters Frank Wirtanen, an agent of the impending world war. Being of sufficiently Aryan heritage, Campbell becomes a member of the party in name only. Instead of leaving the country with his parents, Campbell continues his career as a playwright, his only social contacts being Nazis. Campbell, an American who moved to Germany with his parents at age 11, recounts his childhood as the Nazi Party is consolidating its power.

#MOTHER NIGHT BOOK TRIAL#

He is writing it while imprisoned and waiting for his war crimes trial for his actions as a Nazi propagandist. Sparrow, a.k.a.The novel is framed as the memoir of Howard W. Philosophical Viewpoints: Philosophy of History & Historical Narratives.What must be in the layers below him? Primitive kitchens, temples, a famous Assyrian? Campbell imagines himself being buried in dust of the Holy Land.We're talking Paul Joseph Goebbels (Campbell's old boss) here. Campbell is appreciative, but he doesn't think he has time for "remarkable Assyrians" (1.34) like Tiglath-pileser, since he's got Germans on the brain.

Marx offers to bring Campbell a book on it.

Marx tells all this to Campbell, who is unaware of this particular strain of ancient history.

Marx and his dad spend their weekends excavating the ruins of Hazor-a Canaanite city in Palestine that was invaded and burned down by an Israelite army, rebuilt by King Solomon, and then burned down again by Tiglath-pileser the Third in 732 BCE.

He was born in Israel, never left, and wants to be a lawyer.

Campbell notes that the eighteen-year-old guarding his cell, Arnold Marx, knows nothing about the war.

Campbell describes his war crimes, the stones of his cell, and the collective memory of those around him surrounding WWII as "ancient history.".

Campbell says this key is "ancient history" (1.12) because no one uses such typewriters anymore, even though he heavily made use of the symbol in his own correspondence during his time in Germany.

Worth noting, Campbell says, is the type of typewriter: it was made in Germany during WWII and still supplies a key on the keyboard with a swastika on it.

Campbell is writing this all behind bars in Israel.

As indication of this commitment, Friedmann has given Campbell a typewriter, stenographer services, and access to research assistants to help corroborate his story.

Friedmann wants as much info as possible on Nazi war crimes.

Campbell also lets us know he jotted this memoir down in 1961 for Tuvia Friedmann, Director of the Haifa Institute for the Documentation of War Criminals.

Hmmm… Might be worth a quick look at our take on the novel's epigraph really quick, right about now.

Campbell, Jr., our narrator tells us, and he was born an American, got a rep as a Nazi, and chooses to be nationless.