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Louis Pipestone
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 night, Thomas and Rose lay side by side, and Thomas tells her that he had a drink. Rose says she’ll kill him if he takes another. Thomas asks if she’ll poison him. Rose asks if he remembers the biscuits from a few days ago. She tells him that Wade made them and couldn’t find baking powder. He held up what he had used instead, and Rose saw that it was a can of Ajax powder. So, she tells Thomas, he’s already been poisoned. But please don’t take another drink, she says. Thomas promises that he won’t.
This chapter illustrates again the way that humor, pain, and danger can be intertwined. The story about Wade making biscuits with Ajax is funny, but at the same time, it could have actually harmed Thomas. Similarly, Rose tells the story in response to Thomas saying he had a drink; she responds to that news with humor, but there’s also the sense that Thomas drinking could cause serious damage and could be dangerous, both to himself and his family.
Themes
