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, tired at work, sees Roderick again perched on the band saw. He takes out his shaving kit, which he’d brought from home as a kind of experiment. Maybe shaving might wake him up, he thinks. It works. And that morning, and every morning after, he greets the morning shift with a perfect shave and combed hair.
This chapter shows Thomas’s ingenuity and also reveals his optimism and the humor he uses to address challenges. Instead of lamenting where he is, that he has to stay up all night for his job and is having a hard time doing it, Thomas looks for a novel solution, which ends up working.
Themes
