This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

The story that Vonnegut tells is not his own, it is the memoirs of Howard W. Campbell, Jr., In the introduction Vonnegut explains that he changed a few elements of the story for the sake of censorship (at the request of the author), and to protect historical and confidential military records. Other then that, the story is completely untouched and told in the voice of Campbell.

I adored this book. I read it from cover to cover in one shift at work; I just couldn’t put it down. It is the compelling narrative of a man who was born in America, raised in Germany, and approached by a military officer before World War II to be a spy for the Americans. He accepts the job, and is, for all intents and purposes, a Nazi. Prior to this, he is a playwright, with a beautiful German actress for a wife, and the two of them have many friends who are Nazis. To Campbell, they are just people, who happen to be Nazis. As far as the war is concerned, he would be just as happy ignoring the whole thing and continue writing his productions, but the military officer knows it is impossible to be passive at this critical time in history. Campbell becomes a war propagandist, where he had his own radio show. He was in the spotlight and everyone in the world took him as a Nazi and believed every word that he said to be what he truly believed. Only three people knew that he was really a spy: himself, the military officer who approached him, and one other who remains unnamed.  

Most of Vonnegut’s novels do not have a clear cut moral to the story, he does not spoon feed you what you want to hear. His books are not meant to be taken lightly and the meaning isn’t blatantly obvious. This book on the other hand, which was not written exclusively by him, is so far the only exception to this pattern. It is still told in the same style, but you know that there is something to be learned from this, that the author is attempting to teach you something.

I do not enjoy literature that is straight forward and to the point. I enjoy thinking about it, contemplating its meaning. I want to close the book when I am finished and ask myself what it all meant. Has this book changed how I think about the world? I do not want to be spoon fed morals that can be taught from Aesop’s Fables. Drew Wood said it best when he said: “The goal of good literature is not to reassure, but to challenge assumptions that we don’t even realize we are making.” I do not want to be reassured that the way that I think or feel is the right way; I want to make myself a better human being by challenging myself to think outside of the box, to reach out of my comfort zone and analyze issues that may make me feel uncomfortable. It is only through these means that I feel literature is of value to my life. Every story I read makes me a better person, by seeing another point of view, by raising a question that I hadn’t thought to ask, which may or may not have an answer. Honestly, most questions I am left with at the end of a good novel do not have answers. They concern the human condition, and those questions are some of the most difficult to answers. They deal with motives, powerful and primitive emotions, the various roles we take in our lifetime, and how we deal with situations. By attempting to answer these issues about the human condition, I feel like I can make myself a better person.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Howard W. Campbell, Jr. pretended to be a Nazi, and only he knew in his heart that the propaganda that he spread was not what he believed. His wife, parents, friends, had no idea that the he was working for the Americans. From a historical perspective, it matters very little what he believed, what matters is the profound effect his actions and words had on the war. It matters most that his radio addresses fueled the fire of Nazism in Germany and abroad, that it was his words that inspired young men to enlist in the German army, to put to death hundreds of thousands of Jews at Auschwitz, Dachau, Belzek, and other concentration camps. Historically, his words led many to believe that Jews, Poles, Romanys, and many others were inferior, and his impact lies in the consequences of his actions, not in the true convictions of his heart.

As people, we must realize that the image we project to the world, our actions and words have the most impact on the lives of others. The true convictions of your heart matter very little, unless you convey them through your actions and how you interact with the world.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Vonnegut rededicated the book “to Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a man who served evil too openly and good too secretly, the crime of his times”

The title of the book is Campbell’s. It is taken from a speech by Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust. The speech is this:

I am a part of the part that at first was all, part of the darkness that gave birth to light, that supercilious light which now disputes with Mother Night her ancient rank and space, and yet can not succeed; no matter how it struggles, it sticks to matter and can’t get free. Light flows from substance, makes it beautiful; solids can check its path, so I hope it won’t be long till light and the world’s stuff are destroyed together.  

I suppose the most this raises for me is questions about good and evil, darkness and light and other archetypical allegories. Take from it what you will

Some of the rhetorical questions this novel raised to me are: Is it possible to continue living a lie, once the truth has been exposed? Can we turn a blind eye to the truth if we prefer living the lie? How long can you pretend to be something or someone you are not, without it consuming who you are?

At what point do we stop pretending, and start becoming?