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
Wood Mountain trains with Barnes in secret so that he won’t be seen not wearing the fake cast. The only person he tells about the fake cast is the baby. Wood Mountain feels guilty lying to him. Publicly, he blames the injury, without giving much other detail, on the horse Gringo. Later, when Wood Mountain is working on the cradle board and she realizes that he’s faking his injury, Grace says she won’t tell anyone and also tells him that Joe Wobble is trying to fake him out too. She also teases him about him liking Patrice before she walks away, lamenting that Wood Mountain doesn’t have feelings for her.
Wood Mountain only tells the baby that he is faking his injury—because the baby is the only person he can’t lie to—and his fake injury is also discovered while he is working on the cradle board for the baby, showing how devoted Wood Mountain is to Vera’s baby.
Themes
