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In “Night,” the night itself represents the narrator’s struggle to come to terms with her unconscious mind. The narrator’s urges to kill her sister Catherine only surface at night—during the day, she and her sister sit together on the hammock in peace. Clearly, the night activates the narrator’s disturbing unconscious urges. The only way the narrator can combat these urges is by literally exploring the dark night around her family’s property. Because of the family’s isolation from town, the property lacks streetlights and the narrator must adjust to the darkness. She is only able to sleep when the birds begin to sing and the sky begins to lighten. This peace that comes with daytime underscores the depth of her struggle with her unconscious mind during the night. It is only her father’s unemotional response to her dark thoughts that eventually comforts the narrator and helps her sleep at night. In other words, by accepting the workings of her unconscious mind instead of fearing them, the narrator is finally able to be at peace with the night.
Night Quotes in Night
The Night quotes below all refer to the symbol of Night. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Night
Quotes
The east side of our house and the west side looked on two different worlds, or so it seemed to me. The east side was the town side, even though you could not see any town. Not so much as two miles away, there were houses in rows, with streetlights and running water. And though I have said you could not see any of that, I am really not sure that you couldn’t get a certain glow if you stared long enough.
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I remembered what I had completely forgotten—that I used to have a sandbox there, placed where my mother could watch me out that north window. A great bunch of overgrown spirea was flowering in its place now and you could hardly see out at all.
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Who was it? Nobody but my father. He too sitting on the stoop looking towards town and that improbable faint light. He was dressed in his day clothes.
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He said, “People have those kinds of thoughts sometimes.”
He said this quite seriously and without any sort of alarm or jumpy surprise. People have these kinds of thoughts or fears if you like, but there’s no real worry about it, no more than a dream, you could say.
[….] An effect of the ether, he said. Ether they gave you in the hospital. No more sense than a dream.
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Get the entire Night LitChart as a printable PDF.
Night Symbol Timeline in Night
The timeline below shows where the symbol Night appears in Night. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Night
...of her days in the hammock in the yard. Her troubles sleeping persist and her nighttime walks become routine. She becomes used to the empty, dark, and quiet house at night....
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One night, the narrator senses a presence while on her nightly walk. Though she is nervous at...
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