The primary moral of Mother Night, Vonnegut tells us in his introduction, is that "we are what we pretend to be" and should thus be pretty darned careful about what we are pretending to be (a secondary moral being the less enlightening statement "when you're dead, you're dead"). In the eyes of the entire world, Campbell is exactly what he pretended to be during the war, a traitorous Nazi purveyor of propaganda who mocked and demoralized allied troops as well as regular citizens. Internally, Campbell hardly knows what he is anymore; he claims no country, no political values, wanting only to live in a "nation of two" with his beloved wife Helga once again. A series of significant events forces Campbell out of the cocoon of his past fifteen years, and his thoughts and actions along the way provide big juicy morsels of food for thought: taking personal responsibility for one's actions, the harsh truths of war and peace, the sometimes vast differences between truth and fact, individual redemption before self and society, finding direction and a purpose in a world gone mad, etc. Vonnegut's scythe-like dark humor cuts deeper than mere satire, aiming directly at some of the darker sections of the human heart, areas which most individuals too often ignore or refuse to acknowledge. The gallows humor can be quite funny on the surface, but it is in actuality a scalpel which Vonnegut wields to open up the heart and soul of the reader for self-examination. Mother's Night, the title of which is taken from Goethe's Faust, is a relatively short but very powerful novel.
This is Vonnegut's most conventional novel (though none of them is sci-fi really) and Campbell's eventual exile and self-doubt is beautifully and convincingly rendered. Among other things, we are asked if Campbell's attitude--having no politics but a "nation of two" with wife Helga--is sufficient in a time of war. To what extent is he responsible for his actions regardless of his intentions? And what is he to do about it, both during the war and after? Could he have done anything differently or better? Would doing nothing have been better?
Aside from the moral conundrums there is a strongly realized and written novel here that holds its own with any other writer's work, with rich characters and scenes that might surprise the reader of other Vonnegut novels with its conventionality. In particular, Campbell's long exile in New York mourning Helga (and to a lesser extent himself) is often poignant. His nearly domestic relationship with George Kraft during this time is charming. Of course Kurt Vonnegut also puts Campbell in conversation with fellow Haifa prisoner Adolf Eichman, as only K.V. would do. One of Vonnegut's best.