The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman

by

Louise Erdrich

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Agency and Exploitation Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Power, Solidarity, and Community Action Theme Icon
Oppression and Supposed Good Intentions Theme Icon
Humor and Pain Theme Icon
Sex, Violence, and Gender Theme Icon
Agency and Exploitation Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Night Watchman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Agency and Exploitation Theme Icon

When Patrice talks with Betty Pye about sex, Betty says that sometimes men come to the reservation, tell women they want to get married, then “ditch the woman, [and] sell her to someone who puts them out for sex.” This seems to be what happened to Vera. And by the time Vera actually appears in the novel, she is trapped in the hold of a ship, and it seems like she has been sold into a kind of sexual slavery that strips her of her agency. When Patrice goes to the city to look for Vera, Jack claims to act in Patrice’s best interests; really, though, he lies to her and manipulates the situation to try and get her to do what he wants her to. This situation doesn’t entail the erasure of agency that Vera experiences—Patrice accepts the waterjack job because the money is good, and when she does it, she seems to enjoy the actual performance. But once what happened to the last two waterjacks is revealed (the first is dead, and the second is “on her last legs”), and it becomes clear that the suit is poisoning them, it also becomes clear that Jack is acting exploitatively and has erased Patrice’s agency by lying to her and luring her into performing without telling her that the performance might kill her.

Arthur Watkins seems to have aims similar those of Jack and the people who exploit Vera. When Millie is considering an incorrect census from years ago that made people on the Turtle Mountain Reservation seem prosperous, she says, “I suspect as always they simply want our land.” The Termination Bill can be seen, in part, to have similar goals in mind, to seize land held by Native people so that those in power can use it for their own purposes. To achieve that aim, Watkins introduces a bill that, if passed, would essentially erase the agency of the Native people on that land; they would be “relocated” without a say in the matter. With that in mind, the novel highlights the tendency of people in power to erase the agency of people with less power so that they can exploit them, their bodies, or their land.

Related Themes from Other Texts
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Agency and Exploitation ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Agency and Exploitation appears in each chapter of The Night Watchman. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Aft
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Agency and Exploitation Quotes in The Night Watchman

Below you will find the important quotes in The Night Watchman related to the theme of Agency and Exploitation.
Introductory Note Quotes

My grandfather Patrick Gourneau fought against termination as a tribal chairman while working as a night watchman. He hardly slept, like my character Thomas Wazhashk. This book is fiction. But all the same, I have tried to be faithful to my grandfather’s extraordinary life. Any failures are my own. Other than Thomas, and the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant, the only other major character who resembles anyone alive or dead is Senator Arthur V. Watkins, relentless pursuer of Native dispossession and the man who interrogated my grandfather.

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
Page Number: i
Explanation and Analysis:
Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant Quotes

Thomas was named for the muskrat, wazhashk, the lowly, hardworking, water-loving rodent […] Although the wazhashkag were numerous and ordinary, they were also crucial. In the beginning, after the great flood, it was a muskrat who had helped remake the earth. In that way, as it turned out, Thomas was perfectly named.

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:
Lard on Bread Quotes

Word went out that dough was in Patrice’s bucket. That she’d forgotten to cook it, bake it, fry it […] Saint Anne pushed a buttered bun across the table to Patrice. Someone handed an oatmeal cookie down the line. Doris gave her half a bacon sandwich.

Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Doris Lauder
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:
The Skin Tent Quotes

There were times when Patrice felt like she was stretched across a frame, like a skin tent. She tried to forget that she could be so easily blown away. Or how easily her father could wreck them all. This feeling of being the only barrier between her family and disaster wasn’t new, but they had come so far since she started work.

Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:
Juggie’s Boy Quotes

Many years back, the first Wobleszynski had encroached on the land owned by Wood Mountain’s grandmother. Since then, the Wobleszynskis sent their cattle to graze on Juggie’s land so often that her family had finally shanghaied a cow. This happened during berry-picking time, when there were extra people camped out everywhere, so if the cow was stolen it was quickly absorbed into boiling pots. Nothing was ever traced or proved but nothing was ever forgotten, either. Over the years, resentment between the families had become entrenched.

Related Characters: Wood Mountain, Juggie Blue, Joe “Wobble” Wobleszynski
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:
Valentine’s Days Quotes

Valentine said, “You can have my days.”

“What do you mean?”

“My sick days. Mr. Vold told me that I could give my days to you. Under the circumstances.”

Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Valentine Blue, Walter Vold
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Pukkons Quotes

“This one takes away the treaties.”

“For all Indians? Or just us?”

“All.”

“At least they’re not picking on us alone,” says Biboon. “Maybe we can get together with the other tribes on this thing.”

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Biboon
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:
A Bill Quotes

In the newspapers, the author of the proposal had constructed a cloud of lofty words around this bill—emancipation, freedom, equality, success—that disguised its truth: termination. Termination. Missing only the prefix. The ex.

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
Page Number: 91
Explanation and Analysis:

“They think if you follow their ways your skin will bleach out. They call it lightsome and gladsome.”

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
Page Number: 92
Explanation and Analysis:
Who? [1] Quotes

So it comes down to this, thought Thomas, staring at the neutral strings of sentences in the termination bill. We have survived smallpox, the Winchester repeating rifle, the Hotchkiss gun, and tuberculosis. We have survived the flu epidemic of 1918, and fought in four or five deadly United States wars. But at last we will be destroyed by a collection of tedious words.

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Who? [2] Quotes

How should being an Indian relate to this country that had conquered and was trying in every possible way to absorb them? […] How could Indians hold themselves apart, when the vanquishers sometimes held their arms out, to crush them to their hearts, with something like love?

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
Page Number: 98
Explanation and Analysis:
Flags Quotes

He had been there a few months when he heard the phrase a flag worth dying for, and a slow chill prickled.

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk
Page Number: 100
Explanation and Analysis:
The Old Muskrat Quotes

“Survival is a changing game.”

Related Characters: Biboon (speaker), Thomas Wazhashk
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:

“I would like to move we refer to House Concurrent Resolution 108 as the Termination Bill. Those words like emancipation and Freedom are smoke.”

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk (speaker)
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
The Waterjack Quotes

Gawiin ingikendizo siin. I am a stranger to myself […] This was again the sort of feeling and thinking that could only be described in Chippewa, where the strangeness was also humorous and the danger surrounding this entire situation was the sort that you might laugh at, even though you could also get hurt, and there were secrets involved, and desperation, for indeed she had nowhere, after her unthinkable short immediate future rolling in the water tank, nowhere to go but the dressing room down at the other end of the second-floor hall of Log Jam 26.

Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
The Average Woman and the Empty Tank Quotes

He reached over to his lunch box. Maybe he’d left that crust. It was LaBatte’s lunch box, full. A meat sandwich with real butter. More bread, this time with butter and sugar. A baked potato, still warm. Apples.

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, LaBatte
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:
Two-Day Journey Quotes

She began to wonder whether she was even dead. Although she had been dead way back when she’d been alive. Maybe for a long time. Of that she was sure.

Related Characters: Vera Paranteau
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:
The Promotion Quotes

“A pimp is someone who owns the lady. Takes the money she got paid for having sex, see?”

“No. I don’t see,” said Patrice flatly. But she did see. Jack would have tampered with her slightly, just enough so that when somebody else came along she’d have that shame, then more shame, until she got lost in shame and wasn’t herself.

Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Betty Pye
Page Number: 296
Explanation and Analysis:
New Year’s Soup Quotes

And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was definitely true—you never really knew a man until you told him you didn’t love him. That’s when his true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface.

Related Characters: Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau, Zhaanat
Page Number: 344
Explanation and Analysis:
Thomas Quotes

His mind was everything to him, but he hadn’t the slightest notion how to save it. He just kept diving down, grabbing for the word, coming back up. The battle with termination and with Arthur V. Watkins had been, he feared, a battle that would cost him everything.

Related Characters: Thomas Wazhashk, Arthur V. Watkins
Page Number: 442
Explanation and Analysis: