Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Night Watchman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power, Solidarity, and Community Action
Oppression and Supposed Good Intentions
Humor and Pain
Sex, Violence, and Gender
Agency and Exploitation
Summary
Analysis
On the train, Patrice is unsure what to do when a man asks her to change seats so he and his wife can sit together. A different man volunteers to switch seats. The man who wants Patrice to move says, “You two belong together.” When the other man sits next to Patrice, she sees that it’s Wood Mountain. He says he’s getting off in Fargo, where he has a fight, and talks about his training process. When Patrice tells him her plan to find Vera, he tells her that if she wants to find Vera, she should find the “scum.”
Patrice is at the very beginning of her journey and already she experiences the discomfort and shock of being in a new and strange situation where you don’t know the rules and norms. She also experiences racism almost immediately, foreshadowing the dangers of the world that Patrice will enter when she follows Wood Mountain’s advice to find the “scum.”
Themes
