The Purpose of Mother Night
Over the years, such world-renowned authors as Mark Twain and J. D. Salinger have shown readers how literature reflects the era in which it is written. Another author who has also made significant contributions to American literature is Kurt Vonnegut, author of such well-known novels as Slaughterhouse 5 and Cat's Cradle.
Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana ("Kurt Vonnegut, Jr."). Vonnegut attended Cornell University in 1940 where he wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun ("Chronology"). In 1943, Vonnegut joined the United States Infantry. He fought in World War II for the 106th Infantry Division until 1945 when he was captured by the Germans and shipped to a work camp in Dresden. It was here in the city of Dresden where Vonnegut witnessed the American/British firebombing that killed an estimated 135,000 people. "[Vonnegut] tried for many years to put into words what he had experienced during that horrific event...It took him more than twenty years, however, to produce Slaughterhouse Five" ("Vonnegut in WWII").
Slaughterhouse Five is Vonnegut's most famous work. In this book, Vonnegut fictionally recreates his experience in Dresden. However this book wasn't published until 1969, and he had published several works before this. His first book, Player Piano, was published in 1952; and his third, Mother Night, was published in 1961 ("Chronology"). Even though Slaughterhouse Five was Vonnegut's only novel to re-create his experience in Dresden, a strong anti-war theme can be found in his earlier literature as well. A fine example of one of his works that fits this description is Mother Night. The novel takes place in an open jail in Old Jerusalem. The protagonist introduces himself by saying, "My name is Howard W. Campbell, Jr. I am an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by inclination, The year in which I write this book [is] 1961" (Vonnegut 17). In first-person narration Campbell accounts stories from before, during and post World War II. The reader learns that Campbell lived in Germany before the war entertaining Nazis as a playwright. He and his wife Helga had no intention of leaving Germany once war became a threat. Campbell tells the reader that in 1938 he was recruited as an American special agent who was to pose as a Nazi propagandist during the war. The reader learns that this is the reason Campbell is currently behind bars in; he is to be tried by Israel for severe war crimes of spreading propaganda.
Influenced by the fear of communism by American society and containment beliefs of people like George Kennan, who advocated that the US should use diplomatic, economic, and military action to contain communism, Truman established the Truman Doctrine, which stated that the US would protect democracies throughout the world, pledging the US would fight it around the world. This doctrine was an extension to both the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary. In dealing with foreign policy, Truman did everything to protect nations of being consumed by communism, such as the Berlin Airlift, in which Truman decided to avoid the Soviet blockade of West Berlin and flew supplies directly over to the people in need. In Asia, Truman decided to use limited warfare, meaning the lack of atomic weapons, and was highly criticized by Douglas MacArthur, commander of the army, who he later dismissed for not following US policy.
But he wasn?t decisive and convicted enough to go all out. Maybe it was because Truman made many decisions regarding Korea based on the assumption that he thought that the Soviets were more involved than they actually were; in retrospect, if he hadn?t had those suspicions, he may not have been so cautious about driving Asian communism into the ground was the best course of action.
"In Slaughterhouse Five, -- Or the Children's Crusade, Vonnegut delivers a complete treatise on the World War II bombing of Dresden. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a very young infantry scout* who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.' The reviewer concludes that 'Slaughterhouse Five is an extraordinary success. It is a book we need to read, and to reread.' "The popularity of Slaughterhouse Five is due, in part, to its timeliness; it deals with many issues that were vital to the late sixties: war, ecology, overpopulation, and consumerism. Klinkowitz, writing in Literary Subversions.New American Fiction and the Practice of Criticism, sees larger reasons for the book's success: 'Kurt Vonnegut's fiction of the 1960s is the popular artifact which may be the fairest example of American cultural change. . . . Shunned as distastefully low-brow . . . and insufficiently commercial to suit the exploitative tastes of high-power publishers, Vonnegut's fiction limped along for years on the genuinely democratic basis of family magazine and pulp paperback circulation. Then in the late 1960s, as the culture as a whole exploded, Vonnegut was able to write and publish a novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age. '"Writing in Critique, Wayne D. McGinnis comments that in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut 'avoids framing his story in linear narration, choosing a circular structure.
Wolf, Richard. “Timeline: Same-Sex marriage through the years.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 26 June 2015,
Fox (1995) poses that it is possible that early childhood attachment does not influence adults’ minds relative to attachment. He also is hesitant to agree that parental sensitivity is a valuable aspect that is potentially “transmitted” to offspring.
Now that the idea of a global war has been established, it is important to establish the role of the United States (USA). One of the most important documents in establishing this was the ‘Truman Doctrine’. President Harry S. Truman (1945-53) outlined what would become the basis of US foreign policy for the duration of the Cold War. This was the policy of containment – trying to keep communism from spreading to the rest of the world. His speech to Congress in March 19...
They say that the pen is mightier than the sword, and in the case of the Truman Doctrine and NSC-68, this rings true. The world was seeing so many vast changes in power, so many revolutions, and so much blood shed due to war; it was hard to find a solid standing ground for the United States when it came to their stance on foreign policy. America has been a proud nation, and one that stood firm in its believes, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, many people in government disagreed on just what to do when it came to the issue of Soviet Union, the rise and fall of communism, and countries such as Greece and Turkey, failing due to the revolutions they were facing because of soviet uprising. President Truman, writer of the Truman Doctrine, would
At the end of World War II, the military and foreign policies of the White House were moving in opposite directions. Militarily, the U.S. adopted a position of rapid demobilization after the war. Meanwhile, Truman had a strong desire to meet the communist ‘threat’ head on. Congress, however, did not share Truman’s view of needing "to meet the Communist challenge wherever it appeared." For example, Senator Robert Taft, a prominent Republican senator, "expressed the current mood when he objected to any attempt by the Administration to divide the world into communist and anti-communist zones, for "he did not want war with the Soviet Union." As for the sentiment of the American public, "there was no denying that the majority of the American people did not want to embark on a Crusade." With opposition from not only the American public but also from Congress, President Truman had to take action in order to convince Americans of the reality of the Soviet threat, in addition to the threat of communism in general. In fact, Truman was even told that he would need “to scare the hell out of the American people.” He did just that with the Truman Doctrine.
In addition to the prevention of communism, President Truman’s decision was also influenced by the apprehensive environment during The Cold War. The Soviet Union was able to ruin the United States as the monopoly of nuclear bombs in 1949 when they successfully detonated their firs...
Admittedly, many psychologists define attachment as an enduring affectionate bond that one person forms between himself and another person throughout life. Since Mary Ainsworth provided the most famous research: strange situation, offering explanations how each individual differences in attachment. However, in this Adult Attachment Style questionnaire that I took, I found many factors relevant to attachment as it was defined in the textbook. For example, in the textbook, it defines attachment based on Ainsworth research, the strange situation by observing attachment forms between mother and infants. Which they are described in four attachment styles: securely attached, insecure avoidant, insecure resistant, and insecure disorganized. The questions on the questionnaire were based on those areas to determine my style of attachment.
...sed by Korea. In 1950 the Truman Administration faced, “The real dilemma of obtaining congressional approval to implement the $15 billion or more recommendations of NSC-68 as well as European rearmament.” Truman needed a catalyst in order to make it possible to implement those funds. Before Korea, America’s political landscape made it impossible for such a sum to be approved. As Acheson admitted, “Korea came along and saved us.” The war made it possible to increase the budget and implement change because public support was high. American lives were at risk, and that would loom larger to the public than possible economic repercussions. The Korean War gave Truman the precedent to raise the budget, implement NSC-68, and oppose communism at every turn. The new policy established shaped the course of the Cold War, which in turn has shaped the world stage to this day.
NeJaime, Douglas. "Marriage Inequality: Same-Sex Relationships, Religious Exemptions, and The Production of Sexual Orientation Discrimination." California Law Review100.5 (Oct2012): 1169-1238. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
In 1945 Kurt Vonnegut witnessed a horrific series of bombings that led to the destruction of the German city of Dresden, where he was taken as a prisoner of war. The controversial fire-storm raid, carried out by bombers of the Royal Air Force and US Air Force, took casualties of up to a quarter million people (Klinkowitz x-xi). As a prisoner of war, Vonnegut was forced to participate as a corpse miner in the city's cleanup process. Upon his return from the Second World War, Vonnegut decided to write a book describing his traumatic war experiences. After twenty years of struggling with research, failing to recall personal experiences, and publishing two novels and countless short stories, Kurt Vonnegut finally published-as what he frequently refers to as-the "book about Dresden." It was titled Slaughterhouse Five or the Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance With Death, or more simply: Slaughterhouse Five. The result of twenty years of work is a biography that has been bizarrely fictionalized by Vonnegut's incorporation of anecdotes about alien abduction and time travel.
...ychology Today 47) WHY??? Why does he say this and not explain why this happens? I feel that he could have gone much more in depth with this subject. He could have brought up the character of Buffalo Bill, from the Tom Harris novel "Silence of the Lambs." In the book, Bill is a man who dresses up in women's clothing and posses for himself in front of a mirror. Or Baumeister could have showed some statistics on actual sex changes, to show that maybe more men change into women than vice' versa. But, he shows no such support for his claim.
“One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 seconds in the United States” (Stewart & Croudep, 1998-2012). Domestic violence can interfere with the husband-wife relationship because one spouse is always in constant fear of the other. This violence could vary from physical abuse to ps...