Mother Night

In the final five chapters, Campbell seems likely to escape personal consequences for his crimes once again. However, The Psychological Struggle With Guilt is becoming harder for him to bear, as he can no longer stand to inhabit separate, fragmented identities. His conversation with the patrolman in Chapter 41 offers yet another means of escape from the weight of personal responsibility. The patrolman subscribes to a kind of scientific nihilism, suggesting that all supposedly moral or immoral acts are merely the result of brain chemistry. If even the most reprehensible actions can be attributed to chemical imbalances, does any action carry moral weight? The question strikes Campbell as another form of denial, an evil he detests, and he passes by the patrolman’s implications with little commentary.

In Chapter 42, the woman in the bomb shelter voices the cumulative anxiety of all those trapped with her, beleaguered and caught in a dangerous place, trying to survive against an incomprehensible force that cannot describe its intent and is indifferent to the feelings of those whose lives are on the line. Her utter powerlessness against the is faceless violence illustrates The Limits of Morality: The outpouring of emotion changes nothing; the universe is too large and too prone to violence. Still, the unrestrained portrait of what they are feeling inside humbles the other inhabitants of the shelter, including Campbell, who recognizes that after the trauma of the war, he will never be shocked by anything again.

When Bernard O’Hare reappears in Campbell’s apartment, his presence raises further questions about The Limits of Morality. He is first referred to as a Fury (244), and soon after as St. George (245), two historical figures representing two different models of justice: that of retribution and that of civic order. These ideological figures are firmly on the moral side of Good, and this is precisely how O’Hare thinks of himself, particularly after living a life of middling importance and disappointment. O’Hare pictures himself as an agent of Good, and this identity gives his life meaning, but within Campbell’s narrative he represents what is most evil in humankind. His moral righteousness, his visceral hatred of what he decides is Evil, is emblematic of the problem that haunts humanity, according to Campbell: the same righteousness and ideological hatred that drive O’Hare to want to commit murder also allow for genocide and war.

Campbell’s exhaustion with life, his resignation and acceptance of responsibility, are mirrored back to him by Dr. Epstein’s mother, who sings the command she heard over the speakers at Auschwitz: “Corpse-carriers to the guardhouse” (260). This evokes the exhausted and resigned state described by Arnold Marx, Campbell’s prison guard in Jerusalem. Campbell’s decision to turn himself in and face consequences may seem as inexplicable as Marx’s decision to join the Sonderkommando, particularly knowing the result of the choice, but Campbell offers it as an ambiguous answer to Marx’s question of why men volunteer for such a grisly position.

Campbell’s Psychological Struggle With Guilt concludes here, as his guilt finally reaches him in a concrete manner. Throughout the writing of his memoirs, Campbell seems to vacillate between denying and accepting guilt, and when receives Wirtanen’s letter, his decision is made. Campbell is tired of living, and willing to accept his own culpability in what has happened, even if the legal system will not bring him to justice. The letter from Wirtanen offers yet another escape, and the ability to continue living in his favorite manner of hiding, but in it Campbell simply recognizes the failure of yet another system to punish him for what he has done. His final decision, to hang himself, “for crimes against himself” positions the onus of avoided responsibility squarely where it belongs.