Mother Night

In an introduction written in 1966, five years after Mother Night’s initial publication, Vonnegut states the novel is the only one of his works whose moral he knows: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be” (v). Vonnegut, an American with strong German heritage, then goes on to list his experience with Nazis, beginning in his childhood with American Fascists in the thirties. He was given a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903)—a fabricated text, purporting to be a Jewish plan for world domination, that has inspired antismetic conspiracy theories for over a century—and one of his aunts had to prove the purity of her German blood before her husband would agree to marry her. Vonnegut’s primary experience, however, is during his military service in World War II, when he was captured and, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the Allied bombing of Dresden. Had he been born in Germany instead, Vonnegut imagines, he would naturally have been a Nazi, too. He then offers two other morals: “When you’re dead you’re dead” and “Make love while you can” (viii).