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 novel begins with an explanation of its historical context. On August 1, 1953, the United States Congress announced a bill that aimed to dissolve treaties between the United States government and Native American tribes. The announcement also stated that, if passed, the bill would immediately eliminate five Native tribes; eventually, all Native tribes would be eliminated. Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, fought against that termination when he worked as a tribal chairman and a night watchman, similar to the character of Thomas Wazhashk in the book. Senator Arthur V. Watkins, who is also a character in the book, is the real name of the person who introduced the bill. Pixie, aka Patrice, is “completely fictional.”
Erdrich begins with this explanatory note to establish the book’s relationship to actual events in United States history. Grounding the book in actual events serves numerous functions, but, by citing the characters who are based on actual people—Thomas and Senator Watkins—Erdrich calls attention to two functions in particular. First, Erdrich bases the character of Thomas on her actual grandfather to pay homage to him as a person and to what he, and a group of similarly motivated people, were able to accomplish against long odds. Second, keeping Arthur Watkins’s name the same as the actual senator who proposed the Termination Bill helps to underline the fact that while the novel is a work of fiction, the racism that animated 1950s politicians and policies is not imagined, made-up, or fictionalized. Instead, it is part and parcel of the history of the United States. Erdrich’s decision also points to the ways that racism is embedded in the foundation of the United States as it is today and how it has shaped the ideology of several people charged with running its institutions and creating its policies.
Themes
