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 talks with his father, Biboon, about strategies to fight the proposed bill in Congress. Biboon tells Thomas what they did when he was younger to keep their land, the contracts they signed, petitions they started. Biboon says the treaties were a promise to exchange what Congress gave them for the use of Native land and are supposed to last as “long as the grass grows and rivers flow.” Thomas says they are still using Native land, but they are trying to pretend they didn’t sign a contract to pay rent.
Biboon helps Thomas to come up with plans for the kind of community actions that might be most effective when taking on the powerful. He also points out that the treaties signed by people in his generation were supposed to last in perpetuity, and the institution that guaranteed that, the United States government, is the same one that is now trying to pretend those agreements didn’t happen.
Themes
Thomas then convenes a meeting of the advisory committee at the community center to talk about the bill, House Concurrent Resolution 108, or HCR 108. Joyce Asiginak says that they want to relocate Native people, but “relocate” is a fancy word for “remove.” As a group, they decide to explore possibilities for taking action. They start a petition, which Louis will take to get signed by as many people as possible, and they move to start referring to HCR 108 as the Termination Bill.
Thomas begins to enact some of the plans that he talked about with Biboon, like starting a petition. The advisory committee, notably working as a group rather than as individuals, also decides to cut through the language tricks of the bill’s author by referring to it as the Termination Bill, highlighting the bill’s true intentions rather than let those intentions be disguised by the bland and innocuous-sounding HCR 108.
Themes
