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
After the horses Teacher’s Pet and Gringo have sex, they plod around, looking for grass to eat. They drink from a slough, roll in the mud. From the house, they hear noises that might be from ones like them or from the ones that are different, neighs and chuckles, gasps, and whinnies. The wind blows a fence open. Gringo knocks against Teacher’s Pet as they walk through the fence. Teacher’s Pet lashes out and kicks Gringo in the stomach, opening up a gash in his underbelly.
This chapter presents a kind of miniature play where two horses have sex, and then they happen upon the bush party. In doing so, this section nods at one of the novel’s main themes, sex and gender dynamics, by enacting those conflicts through horses.
Themes
