My favorite book is Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. It looks at a satirical autobiography of a playwright turned Nazi-propagandist, Howard W. Campbell, Jr, who claims his innocence through a mysterious agent whom he claimed recruited him to send messages through radio. Throughout the novel, you question the reliability of the narrator and his motives. The character outlines his life, we hear about his upbringing, origin, his fall from grace, and his various attempts to escape from the clutches of his crimes. There are multiple notable plot lines, such as Campbell's time in New York, and the return of his "wife", and his few encounters with the agent. The writing of the autobiography is set in Israeli prison after he turned himself in because he decides he has nothing to live for. It's an intriguing novel, it dissects the complexities of loneliness and justice. The character looks to understand his decisions, and whether he is guilty in incriminating himself. What Campbell concludes is that you are what you pretend to be, and this is a turning point for the character. If this conclusion is to be believed by the reader, his pretending to be a Nazi-propagandist turned him into one. Although the agent agreed to fight for his innocence, Campbell decided that he would determine his innocence for his crimes against himself. The last we read of Campbell is before his suicide, which the reader assumes that the character has succeeded. The book is haunting in a way that is hard to describe. The eeriness doesn't come from whether the character dies in the end, it comes from the idea that once we realize we have committed crimes against ourselves, we have to decide the punishment.

My favorite piece of art is Pierre Auguste Cot's "The Storm". I love it because although his use of color is nominal in this painting, emotion is conveyed rather by form and facial expression. The young couple, who appear to running through the woods, are moving in anticipation. We know from the title that a storm is coming; however, we never get to experience it ourselves. The woman looks to the side as she's prancing, as if she's trying to see if she can see rain in the distance, however the man is looking at her and her beauty. They cloak themselves with a piece of stray cloth, which could be the woman's dress, swaying in the wind as they move. The man is without a properly done shirt, rather it is thrown onto him, and she is only in her translucent chemise. We can guess from this that they were on some sort of unchaperoned rendezvous, perhaps of a scandalous nature. The carelessness of the man, juxtaposed against the worry of the woman, creates for a dynamic piece without using shock value or intense coloring to grab the viewer's attention. It's a thoughtful piece, that perhaps would be overlooked at first glance. Underneath the immediate impression, it tells a story when examined for even a minute's time.