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The Iron
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
In his mind, Barnes, a math teacher, attaches numbers to people. Patrice he sees as a 26, even though she’s just 19. He loves the curl of the two and loop of the six. One night, he brings Pokey home and says he’ll stop in to meet his parents, who he hasn’t met before. While Barnes, Pokey, and Zhaanat are eating, Pokey says his mother wants to know why Barnes has come. Barnes says he’s just come to visit. Pokey’s mother speaks again in Chippewa, and Pokey translates to Barnes. Zhaanat has said that Pixie doesn’t like him, and she doesn’t like him because he smells bad.
Zhaanat has noticed that Barnes is interested in Patrice and that Patrice isn’t interested in Barnes. This disparity in affection could be harmless, but Zhaanat also knows that it could lead somewhere truly destructive, that if Patrice tried to reject Barnes, his true ugliness might come out (as Zhaanat warns Patrice later in the story). With that in mind, Zhaanat tries, ultimately unsuccessfully, to dissuade Barnes from taking an interest in Patrice. Interestingly, Barnes’s association between Patrice and the number 26 foreshadows Patrice going to Log Jam 26 later in the novel.
Themes
