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
Sometimes Biboon thinks his spirit can fly from tree to tree like a bird. Beneath the ground, he senses beings, and beneath that, the fire of creation, which is buried at the center of the earth, put there by stars. He watches a circle of women dance in a snowy field. One turns and gestures. It’s Julia, and Biboon thinks that he’ll see her soon.
Similar to Thomas’s experience of the supernatural and the star powwow, Biboon has an encounter with the supernatural, which ends with him seeing his wife, who he thinks he’ll see for real soon. Again, it’s notable that this experience of the supernatural isn’t dismissed or treated as more or less real, or more or less important, than other scenes in the novel.
Themes
