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Themes
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Night, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The story “Night” reflects on how parenting strategies or norms can change across time and reflect society as a whole. The narrator of the story is an adult reflecting on a period of time in her childhood. This perspective allows her to comment on the events of the story with more maturity and life experience. The beginning of the core issue of the story, the narrator’s inability to sleep, comes as a result of her parents’ decision to let her choose her own bedtime. Regardless of whether this was a good or bad decision, this choice sets up the importance of parenting as a factor in the story.
Later in the story, when the narrator confesses her thoughts about harming her sister to her father, he gives a nonchalant response without any sign of alarm. He tells her not to worry, and that “people have those kinds of thoughts sometimes.” The narrator reflects that “if this were happening today, he might have made an appointment for me to see a psychiatrist.” This comment reminds the reader that the events of the story take place in an era very different from that of its writing—one in which mental struggles were generally dealt with privately rather than referred to a professional. After the narrator relays her conversation with her father, she writes that “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.” She writes that, in keeping with societal convention, her father never felt remorse about inflicting corporal punishment upon his children, but nevertheless admits that, in the long term, her father’s matter-of-fact attitude about her dark thoughts helped. Implicitly, then, some of her father’s outdated methods were harmful (the corporal punishment) while others were surprisingly effective (treating her dark thoughts as a common problem). Through her ambivalent attitude about her father’s parenting, Munro suggests that while parenting norms are always limited by social convention, a caring parent can also transcend those limits.
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Parenting Across Time ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Parenting Across Time appears in each chapter of Night. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Chapter
Night
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Parenting Across Time Quotes in Night
Below you will find the important quotes in Night related to the theme of Parenting Across Time.
Night Quotes
The thought of cancer never entered my head and she never mentioned it. I don’t think there could be such a revelation today without some kind of question, some probing about whether it was or wasn’t. Cancerous or benign—we would want to know at once.
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After the narrator has her appendix removed, she recovers and returns to school. During the Easter holidays, the narrator’s mother reveals that the doctor, while doing the appendectomy, had also removed a mysterious lump. The adult narrator in this quote reflects on the vast differences in society between the time in which she grew up and that in which she writes. In the case of the lump, attitudes about the possibility of cancer is a huge difference between these two time periods. It betrays both a lack of advancement in the medical field in the 1940s (and thus a higher Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a
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.
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As the narrator walks around her family’s property every night, she sees it in new ways. Her navigation of the night symbolizes a trip through her own unconscious mind as memories resurface and dark thoughts show themselves. The childhood memory that the narrator experiences about the sandbox is emblematic of the fact that these nighttime trips are a part of a coming-of-age journey. This coming of age goes hand-in-hand with the narrator’s separation from her parents. Whereas, in the childhood memory, the narrator’s mother used to watch her play in the sandbox through the kitchen window, as an adolescent the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qu
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.
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One night, as the narrator is on her nightly walk, she runs into her father sitting on the stoop. She does not recognize him at first. The fact that she does not recognize him suggests the distance that has grown between herself and her parents as she navigates growing up. Additionally, his unrecognizability highlights the strangeness of the house at night, a virtually different environment from that of her daytime life. In a sense, the narrator and her father meet each other in an alternative world, different from that of their daytime, normal life. The fact that her father is Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque e
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.
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After the narrator confesses her dark thoughts about killing her sister to her father, he replies nonchalantly. In telling her that unwanted dark thoughts are at least somewhat normal or common, the narrator’s father confirms that the narrator is simply growing up. In other words, the narrator joins the adults in her life in dealing with complicated and dark parts of the self. His comparison of the narrator’s dark thoughts to a dream highlights the disconnect between the narrator’s unconscious and reality. Furthermore, his statement that the thoughts are an effect of the ether (anesthetic) that the hospital gave the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore.
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).
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After the narrator’s father comforts her about her dark thoughts, the adult narrator reflects on his parenting style in this moment. Similarly to the narrator’s reflections on discussions around illness when she was a child, the narrator identifies sharp contrasts between the conversation around mental health in the present and the conversation around mental health in her childhood. The narrator’s comment that, in her father’s position, she might have sent her child to a psychiatrist highlights the discussion of parenting in the story. However, when the narrator says that she would have done this a generation and an income further, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectet
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.
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In the final moments of the story, the narrator reflects on her father’s parenting. She reveals that he often turned to corporal punishment as a parenting tactic. This revelation reminds the reader that the story represents only a short period of the narrator’s childhood and shows a limited view of the personalities and actions of the narrator and her family members. Because the narrator is an adult looking back on a particular time in her childhood, she visits these memories with the perspective of a parent. Her comment that parents make mistakes that they do not even know about illustrates Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempo
