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
The year he went to boarding school, his father was gaunt, and Thomas was always hungry. Thomas’s mother had been torn about whether to cut his hair before he went because they would cut it off when he went to school. To cut hair meant that someone had died, a form of grieving. She decided to cut it off and hang it in the woods so that Thomas would have to come home. At school, one of the first things Thomas noticed was the blue flag. The teacher told him to put his hand over his heart and recite words while looking at it. He had been there for a few months when he heard the phrase about a flag that you should die for and a chill went through his body.
This chapter illustrates the harm that boarding schools caused. While they claimed to be built to benefit Native people, their true motive was to attempt to eliminate Native culture. In place of Native culture, the schools attempted to inculcate into students the kind of United States nationalism represented by the Pledge of Allegiance and the sentiment that one should die for the flag.
Themes
