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
Thomas works on the grave house while Wood Mountain works on the cradle board. Thomas says he guesses they shouldn’t tell Zhaanat that they’re making the grave house and cradle board at the same time. Wood Mountain asks if he thinks it might be bad for the baby. Thomas says he’s not superstitious, though he knows he is, just not as much as LaBatte, who’s afraid of owls and sees omens everywhere he looks.
Erdrich puts birth and death side by side, with Paranteau’s death placed right next to the birth of his grandson. While Wood Mountain worries about the risk that that might pose—placing life so close to death—the scene also seems to suggest how good things, like the baby, can come out of bad situations, whether that is Paranteau’s harassment of his family or the horror that Vera endured. That possibility, that good might come from bad, doesn’t justify or mollify Paranteau’s abuses or the abuses that Vera suffered, but it does suggest the possibility of hope in the darkest of times, similar to how humor is intertwined with pain throughout the novel.
Themes
