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The Old Muskrat
Themes
and Colors
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 goes with Jack to the first address she has to look for Vera. The yard is dead, and the front steps have collapsed. Patrice knocks on the window next to the door. A dog barks, and its bark is high and whining and anxious to live. Patrice feels tears in her eyes. She calls out Vera’s name. Eventually, she gives up and decides to go on to the second address. Jack says that he’s familiar with the building and that if Patrice finds Vera there, it won’t be good.
There’s something foreboding about the first house that Patrice visits. She’ll find out more later, when she returns, but at this point she isn’t quite sure what to make of the troubling sensation that comes over her.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
At the next place, Patrice goes to each apartment but doesn’t get an answer. Jack says that it must be exhausting for Patrice and that they can set up a cot in the dressing room so she can rest. Patrice, though, wrenches her arm from him and tells him she wants to go to the third address, which belongs to Bernadette Blue. Jack asks if she means Bernie Blue and if the two of them are friends. Patrice tells him a friend gave her Bernadette’s address so she could stay there if she needed to. Jack says she’d be better off staying at Log Jam 26. When they get back to the bar, Patrice says she’ll consider being the waterjack if she can get the tips every night instead of just every other night.
Jack continuously tries to shake Patrice off her plan by telling her that the places she wants to visit are dangerous and that she shouldn’t go. Again, his claim to be acting in Patrice’s best interests starts to become more suspicious.
Active
Themes
The next morning, Patrice agrees to be the waterjack. She puts on the suit, and Jack shows her the moves that the waterjack does, moving his shoulders and hips and then doing a “tush wag” before blowing kisses over his shoulder. As she waits to be lowered into the tank, Patrice wonders what her mother would think of her. She thinks to herself in Chippewa, “mayagi. Strange. Maama kaajiig. Strange people. Gawiin ingikendizo siin. I am a stranger to myself.” Patrice thinks that the feeling is one that can only be expressed in Chippewa, where the strangeness is humorous and the danger something you could laugh at, though you might get hurt as well.
