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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
Patrice is lowered into the tank wearing the waterjack costume. She swings around on the rope with her leg pointed up behind her. She remembers there are weights, props, at the bottom and reaches for a pink one before realizing it is a “shocking object.” She instead picks up an iron tulip, which she pretends to smell while looking over her shoulder. Twenty minutes pass easily, and when she gets out, Jack tells her that she’s a sensation.
While Patrice doesn’t enjoy some of the more lewd or sexually explicit aspects of the waterjack performance, she doesn’t seem to entirely dislike performing. In other words, the novel establishes that neither the performance itself nor its sexual nature amount to exploitation, and Patrice is still able to exercise agency in that performance and in her decision to perform, which shows the novel’s nuanced perspective on sex and gender dynamics. However, the relationship between Jack and Patrice becomes more easily understood as straightforwardly exploitative, and as one that has erased Patrice’s agency, later on.
Themes
The next morning, Patrice takes a taxi to the first place where she looked for Vera. She also shows the driver the address of the second place, which Jack had said was dangerous. Patrice asks the driver if there’s anything wrong with the address, and he says not that he knows of. At the first place, she sticks a fork into rotted wood by the door handle to pry the lock loose. In one of the rooms, she finds a dog at the end of a chain bolted to the wall, pale, its bones sticking out. In each of the other rooms, she finds a filthy mat, urine, and feces. And in each room, she finds a chain with a dog collar at the end of each one. In the bathroom, she finds dried blood and two used diapers.
As she continues to look for Vera, Patrice also starts to look for evidence that Jack is not actually helping her, as he claims to be. When she returns to the first address where she looked for Vera, she finds an unsettling scene, which foreshadows the danger that Vera is in.
Themes
Patrice goes back to the dog and asks where Vera is. The dog gives four more breaths before a rheumatic sigh. Jack pulls up outside. Patrice says they should go back to the other address, and Jack says that no, they’re not going there. But Patrice insists. Patrice knocks on every door. From behind one door, someone asks who it is and Patrice says it’s the waterjack. The woman who opens the door is gaunt and bald, and her name is Hilda, the name of the person who had been the waterjack before Patrice. Jack whisks Patrice away, and she asks if that was Hilda. Jack says she’s angry at him because of professional standards. Patrice fights Jack off and bangs on the door, but no one comes to answer.
At the second address, after Jack shows up, Patrice also starts to get a sense of the danger that she might be in when she sees Hilda, the previous waterjack, who is now gaunt and bald. It’s not clear yet that she became sick as a result of being the waterjack, or that Jack is knowingly putting Patrice in harm’s way for his own gain, but the encounter is unsettling for Patrice.
Themes
At Patrice’s insistence, they go next to Bernadette’s house. When Bernadette recognizes Patrice, she cries out with “sorrow and intensity.” Patrice asks her where Vera is, and Bernadette says that she ran away and left Bernadette with the baby. Patrice tells her she’s not taking the baby until Bernadette gives her Vera. Bernadette says she doesn’t know where Vera is, and Patrice tells her to find out then.
This section presents another complication in the novel’s theme of solidarity and community action. While Patrice knows Bernadette, and Bernadette is ostensibly helping Vera by taking care of her child, she isn’t doing so because she wants to, or out of a sense of solidarity with Vera or Patrice, or because she wants to help Patrice fight against the more powerful people who may have taken Vera. Instead, Bernadette does it because it's not clear that there’s another option. As soon as another option shows up—once Patrice walks through the door—Bernadette wants to wash her hands of the situation and be done with it.
Themes
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