The distant town highlights the isolation of the narrator’s family and hints at the opportunity that beckons just beyond their small world. The difficulty that the narrator’s family experiences getting to the doctor during the snowstorm illustrates the extent of their isolation. Similarly, the narrator’s solitude during the summer as she spends her days on the hammock on the family’s property illustrates her lack of connection to her peers and community. The narrator writes that she had mown her family’s front and back lawns “with the idea of giving [the family] some townlike respectability.” The emphasis on “respectability” suggests that there is a class divide between her family’s lifestyle and that of town-dwellers. When the narrator runs into her father on one of her night walks, she notices that he is wearing nicer clothes and looking towards the “improbable faint light” of town. This scene hints at an aspirational significance of the town—it’s a place that’s almost within sight, yet it’s also far away, perhaps too far for the narrator and her family to reach.
Town Quotes in Night
The east side of our house and the west side looked on two different worlds, or so it seemed to me. The east side was the town side, even though you could not see any town. Not so much as two miles away, there were houses in rows, with streetlights and running water. And though I have said you could not see any of that, I am really not sure that you couldn’t get a certain glow if you stared long enough.
Who was it? Nobody but my father. He too sitting on the stoop looking towards town and that improbable faint light. He was dressed in his day clothes.
Town Symbol Timeline in Night
