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
Things started going wrong, Zhaanat thinks, when places started to be named for people and not the real things that happened there, like dreaming, eating, death, where animals appeared. And, in her experience, once people talk about taking land, it’s as good as gone.
Zhaanat’s thoughts seem to suggest that issues began when people started to be elevated above all else, when people were granted the highest forms of estimation and power and, as a result, their egos took over. Then people became willing and able to climb to the highest rung in a hierarchy and subjugate others supposedly below them, according to their whims and desires.
Themes
