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A Seat on the Train
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
At work, Thomas reads through Congress’s proposed bill. As he reads, he automatically replaces the word “emancipate” with “terminate” in his mind. In the news, the author of the bill used lofty words like freedom and equality to cloak the truth, which is that he aimed for “termination.” Earlier in the morning, Thomas had talked with his friend, Martin Cross, a tribal chairman of Fort Berthold. Martin tells Thomas that the man who proposed the bill, Arthur V. Watkins, is the most powerful person in Congress and, though he’s not sure if it matters or not, that the man is a Mormon. Martin says it’s in their religion to “change Indians into whites” and that “they think if you follow their ways your skin will bleach out.”
As Thomas reads through the Termination Bill, he dismantles the language tricks that the bill’s author is trying to play. After he talks to Martin, he also begins to consider the role that religion plays in the racism that motivated Arthur Watkins to propose the bill in the first place.
Themes
