Connection

Much earlier in the year, we read the book The Things They Carried. One of the biggest ideas that the book stressed was intangible burdens. Emotions, to be exact. And so far, that is what stands out the most to me in Mother Night. Howard mentions numerous times how he is pretty much emotionless. He says that he “was feeling no pain” (Vonnegut 46). He worked as a spy, and he has done a lot of things that anybody in his position would feel bad doing. Near the beginning of the novel, Bernard Mengel says that Howard is “the only man who has a bad conscience about what he did in the war” (15). Now, this may be true, because we do see that Howard has some crazy dreams. But they’re mostly about Helga. His wife. And she is what got him through the war. Howard mentions that his “narcotic was what had gotten him through the war; it was an ability to let his emotions be stirred by only one thing-his love for Helga”(47). As for everything else, there was no emotion involved. Or that’s how he makes it seem. I feel like he has a lot of intangible burdens that he carries with him. He just denies it. But Bernard tells him about his dreams, and even though Howard says that he can see why he is having these dreams, he still seems to be a bit in denial. Now, in TTTC, the soldiers don’t exactly deny their intangible burdens. They know, and admit, that they’re there. But the main connection, in my eyes, is the fact that there are emotional burdens. Both novels also concern war, fighting, and living with the intangible burdens after it's all over.