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Three Men
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
Lloyd Barnes’s smartest math student the year before also practices boxing with him. He goes by the name Wood Mountain. Barnes is at the gym he’d set up at a community center, instructing his students. Wood Mountain took a welding class and made weights for the gym by filling cans of all sizes with sand and welding them back together. Barnes throws punches at one of his students, Pokey, to teach him not to flinch. Barnes always drives Pokey home and insists on driving all the way down the path, even though it means he’ll have to back out. At first, Barnes wanted to make sure things would be okay between Pokey and Pokey’s father. Then he saw Pixie, and now, every time he drops Pokey off, he hopes he’ll see Pixie again.
This section emphasizes the improvisation with which the community has faced issues related to a lack of resources in the past: Barnes set up a gym in a community center; Wood Mountain made weights from scratch. In his coaching, Barnes also teaches Pokey not to flinch when punches are thrown at him, a skill that is useful in the boxing ring but also serves as a larger metaphor for Pokey’s life. People will aim to harm him, the passage seems to say, and when that happens, it’s important not to react with fear, but to stand there, ready to counter if necessary when the opportunity is presented.
Themes
Barnes goes back home to the teachers’ quarters. The caretaker/cook, Juggie Blue, always keeps a heaping plate of food warm for him. Juggie is Wood Mountain’s mother. When Barnes goes back to the gym, Wood Mountain is already there, working at a sawdust bag. Barnes tells Wood Mountain that he’s tightening up before he strikes and that he needs to relax. As he helps Wood Mountain work out, Barnes’s arms start to get tired, and he thinks that it’s a good thing he stopped fighting before Wood Mountain started.
Barnes already sees himself, in some ways, as competing with Wood Mountain, even though Wood Mountain is ostensibly Barnes’s student. This recourse to a competitive mindset, and the insecurity that it shows, foreshadows the competitiveness and jealousy that Barnes will feel when it becomes clear that Wood Mountain also has feelings for Patrice.
Themes
