Everyone Has His Own Reason for Complicity in Evil

Early in Thank You for Smoking, Nick Naylor states that he is the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies to pay the mortgage. He later reflects that this has "the ring of a Nuremburg defense" (12). This is not the last time he is compared to a Nazi - Goebbels is a particular favorite among his critics - and this is significant. The Nazis have become something of a metaphor in our society: normal men who grew complicit within an evil system.

Nick spends much of the novel trying to revise his stated reason for complicity. He says that he likes the challenge. Later, he acknowledges to Lorne Lutch, a man who is suffering greatly because of cigarettes, that he stays on the job because he is good at it. By the end, Nick realizes that his reasons cannot...