In the novel, Howard is forced to serve as an U.S. secret Agent by the Blue Fairy, a career that eventually led to his own death. Mother Night represents the fictional memoirs of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American who served as a secret agent for the American Army during the Second World War. Giving that the actual author of the novel served himself as a soldier during the same war, the question of whether or not the author resembles the protagonist in the novel is understandable. Perhaps one of the visions they share is the reality of facts, Mother Night being Vonnegut's only novel that does not feature fantastic elements. Vonnegut wrote "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be," as the final moral for his novel and one thing Campbell and Vonnegut share after all is their vocation and a sentimental attachment for who they really are, not for who they are perceived as being. As far as for Shakespeare, the author is known to have doubled his way with exploring the multiple facets of human nature. Like in Vonnegut's case, love was throughly explored within the depths of Shakespeare's writings, ranging from pure, innocent love to the mature affection and betrayal. In King Lear, the protagonist eventually learns a hard lesson, that the path to knowledge, true knowledge is sprinkled with sacrifices and loss, up to the loss of one's identity. In Vonnegut, identity is lost at the very beginning, being replaced by a different perception of the self to such an extend that the narrator ends up playing his part...

In the former we are directly introduced in the middle of the action, right at the moment when the king offers the kingdom to his daughters. The whole setting of the play is somehow mythical, in a time of kings ruling over their land and knights fighting to protect the land. Shakespeare uses lots of allusions and imagery to convey the audience into this mythical setting: he make references to such stories like "Jack the Giant Killer" and uses the image of some demons and serpents to create the background. The tone of the play is quite humourous and ironic, thus explained by the existence of the Fool. However, the King himself is quite intelligent, even though Shakespeare uses his insanity to address nonhuman objects. Like in many of his other writings, Shakespeare's style of writing is poetic, using iambic rhythms and free verse.
Therefore, it is quite interesting to observe that such aspects of human nature depicted in King Lear resemble other works like that of Vonnegut's and his Mother Night. The technique used by the later is ultimately different from that of Shakespeare's, less dramatic, but tragic nonetheless, written in a first-person journal style. This confessional style is bound to credit the protagonist-narrator because we only get his version of the events. Interesting enough though, it seems as though Campbell discovers more things about himself as the story unfolds than does the reader.