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
Patrice wishes she had a watch so she could be sure to meet Doris and Valentine on time. If she doesn’t arrive on time, she’ll lose her job and won’t be able to support her family. She feels like “a skin tent,” like she’s the only barrier between her family and disaster. While Patrice is at work, her mother, Zhaanat, sits behind the door with an ax, on guard for when Patrice’s father returns. Zhaanat makes baskets and beadwork to sell, but her real job is passing on knowledge to people who come, often from far distances, to learn from her. Because of that knowledge, Zhaanat had been mostly kept out of school. Patrice, on the other hand, grew up speaking Chippewa, but she also had no trouble learning English and was valedictorian of her class.
The connection between the jewel bearings made for watches at the plant and the watch Patrice wants is notable. Patrice’s world is governed by time, and being a second behind schedule could wreck her, and her family’s, lives. But, really, Patrice and her family are beholden not so much to time but to the bosses who enforce those rules, to the people who would fire Patrice for being late. Patrice, then, as well as her entire family, are at the whims of those with more power, subject to their capriciousness with no clear way to exercise autonomy other than by doing what those in power want and expect them to.
Themes
