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 wakes up. In the kitchen, his wife, Rose, has a kettle of water going on the stove. Rose’s mother, Noko, dozes in a chair. When Noko wakes up, she has trouble recognizing Thomas and says, looking at Thomas, that the man she sees is old, while Thomas is a young man. Thomas’s daughter, Sharlo, brushes Noko’s hair, and then Rose and Thomas put Noko to bed, placing a blanket under her to make the mattress more comfortable, which is the only thing they can think of that might help alleviate her pain. Thomas then goes with his son Wade to haul drinking water. Wade, who has skipped grades because he’s smart, tells Thomas that he got into a fight with a boy in school who was picking on him. Thomas tells Wade he doesn’t want him to fight, but if he did, he’d be as good as Wood Mountain.
Noko is experiencing some form of dementia, and Rose and Thomas try to alleviate her suffering using the limited means at their disposal while Sharlo brushes her hair. Thomas then goes to fetch water with his son, Wade. The section as a whole shows how tightly knit Thomas’s family is and also highlights how devoted Thomas is to that family. In a sense, the family, as shown in this section, can be thought of as the most basic unit of solidarity and community, the most fundamental form of coming together in the name of something larger than your individual self.
Themes
