How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
'I found out she was missing the same day you did,' he said.
'How?' I said.
'From you,' he said. 'That was one of the pieces of information you broadcast that night.'
This news, that I had broadcast the coded announcement of my Helga's disappearance, broadcast it without even knowing what I was doing, somehow upset me more than anything in the whole adventure. It upsets me even now. Why, I don't know.
It represented, I suppose, a wider separation of my several selves than even I can bear to think about.
At that climactic moment in my life, when I had to suppose that my Helga was dead, I would have liked to mourn as an agonized soul, indivisible. But no. One part of me told the world of the tragedy in code. The rest of me did not even know that the announcement was being made. (32.20-25)
This is a spy's worst nightmare. We think. We're not spies. As far as you know, anyway, and we can't tell you one way or another for certain, so stop asking.
Anyway, this moment is pretty messed up. The notion of Campbell being two people at once is worth a pause. See, for the most part, he's in charge of this double life. He is the spy, he is the Campbell people see. All of a sudden, thought, he's strangely aware that he's no longer in charge. Actually, it dawns on him he never had control over his spy-self.
If his spy-self is fake, and his fake-self is fake, where is the real Campbell? Oh, yeah: he said that guy disappeared when Helga died. He was only real when he was in love, and living in that private country, population two.
Quote #8
'"This thing's been a building over the years," I told 'em,' said O'Hare. '"It's in the stars—" I told 'em, "in the stars that Howard Campbell and me meet again after all these years." Don't you feel that way?' he asked me.
'What way?' I said.
'It's in the stars,' he said. 'We had to meet like this, right here in this very room, and neither one of us could have avoided it if we'd tried.'
'Possibly,' I said. 'Just when you think there Isn't any point to life—' he said, 'then, all of a sudden, you realize you are being aimed right straight at something.' (43.32-36)
Yeah, O'Hare really buys into this Romeo and Juliet kind of love. Hate. We mean hate. This speech isn't really about Campbell, though: O'Hare's claims to an epic battle between the two have more to do with his own dissatisfaction with life than with any real concern with Campbell's crimes. Seems like Vonnegut is trying to say blaming it on the stars feels pretty appealing when you've got nothing else really going for you.
Quote #9
I don't like this one but use it if nothing else comes up:
'When I heard you were alive, I knew it was something I had to do. There wasn't any way out' he said. 'It had to end like this.'
'I don't see why,' I said.
'Then, by God, I'll show you why,' he said. 'I'll show you, by God, I was born just to take you apart, right here and now.' (43.61-63)
O'Hare has travelled clear across the country in order to hunt Campbell down, all the while telling himself that it had to be this way. O'Hare could have, we don't know, just as easily not done any of this, right? He could have just hung out at home with his bazillions of kids and taken a nap. And yet he chooses to trek over to NYC on this mission. Is the problem that his life at home has no meaning? And now he's looking for it in any quest he can make up?