In “Night,” Munro demonstrates how changing perspective is an important part of coming of age. After the narrator has her appendix removed, she is “not herself,” struggling with violent urges. As she wanders the dark night to combat her disturbing and unfamiliar thoughts, she figuratively learns to navigate the darkness of her mind as well. In the pivotal moment of the story when she runs into her father, she at first does not recognize him, as he is wearing nicer clothes than usual and greets her with unaccustomed formality. This unfamiliarity underscores the narrator’s difficulty in coming to terms with her new perspective on herself and the world. However, his straightforward, accepting response to her dark thoughts—that people sometimes have strange thoughts they don’t want—helps her come to terms with the complexity of her own mind and, seemingly, with the challenges of growing up. Through the narrator’s process of coming to know her home, her father, and herself in a deeper, more mature way, the story suggests that changes of perspective are a key sign of growing up.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Coming of Age ThemeTracker
Coming of Age Quotes in Night
When I was young, there seemed to be never a childbirth, or a burst appendix, or any other drastic physical event that did not occur simultaneously with a snowstorm.
My sister was nine when I was fourteen. The relationship between us was always unsettled. When I wasn’t tormenting her, teasing her in some asinine way, I would take on the role of sophisticated counsellor or hair-raising storyteller.
The more I chased the thought away, the more it came back. No vengeance, no hatred—as I’ve said, no reason, except that something like an utterly cold deep thought that was hardly an urging, more of a contemplation, could take possession of me. I must not even think of it but I did think of it.
The thought was there and hanging in my mind.
The thought that I could strangle my little sister, who was asleep in the bunk below me and whom I loved more than anybody in the world.
I remembered what I had completely forgotten—that I used to have a sandbox there, placed where my mother could watch me out that north window. A great bunch of overgrown spirea was flowering in its place now and you could hardly see out at all.
He said, “People have those kinds of thoughts sometimes.”
He said this quite seriously and without any sort of alarm or jumpy surprise. People have these kinds of thoughts or fears if you like, but there’s no real worry about it, no more than a dream, you could say.
[….] An effect of the ether, he said. Ether they gave you in the hospital. No more sense than a dream.
If this were happening today, he might have made an appointment for me to see a psychiatrist (I think that is what I might have done for a child, a generation and an income further).
If you live long enough as a parent nowadays, you discover that you have made mistakes you didn’t bother to know about along with the ones you do know about all too well. You are somewhat humbled at heart, sometimes disgusted with yourself. I don’t think my father ever felt anything like this.
