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A Critical Analysis of Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

Decent Essays

A Critical Analysis of Mother Night The novel Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut is the fictional memoirs of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, labeled as a spy, who moved to Germany in 1923 at the age of 11, roughly five years after the First World War was over, and then later became a renowned playwright and Nazi propagandist. The action of the novel is narrated by Campbell himself. The plot is that he is recording his memoirs on a typewriter, while awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison. The story of Howards life, although fictional , is proof of the hardships that many people experienced during this historical time period, many of which can be related directly back to the author himself as he also served during the war. This novel can be considered a reflection of his own interpretations and experiences into a fictional text. From a New Historicist perspective there are many references to real world characters which played a key role in the development of the First and Second World War with the interpretation of the author’s opinion towards these characters a new historicist can analyze the work through its cultural context and understand the intellectual history through the story itself. A New Historicist’ aim, when reading a fictional text is to use the author’s interpretation of that time period and related experiences as a guideline to understanding the true historical context of that time. Compared to

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