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Introductory Note
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 September 1953, Thomas Wazhashk sets his work jacket on the chair and lunchbox on the windowsill when he arrives at his post as a night watchman at the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant. At the plant, women apply thin slices of ruby, sapphire, and garnet onto spindles to prepare them for drilling. The jewel bearings are then used by the Defense Department and in Bulova watches. Women fill the desirable jobs because they do much better on exams testing manual dexterity. Thomas considers himself lucky to have gotten his own job at the plant. His name came from the muskrat, wazhashk, a “lowly,” industrious rodent that loves water.
The jewel bearing plant is a main source of well-paying work in the area. The novel points out that it is rare in the 1950s that women would be able to secure well-paying jobs over men, given the gender norms of the time. The fact that the jewel bearings will be used for Department of Defense weapons is also notable; as Thomas and others fight against the U.S. government’s proposed Termination Bill, the jewel bearing plant (where Thomas works) manufactures parts for weapons that will help the U.S. reinforce its military power, which enables the country to administer its will on those with less power. Ultimately, though, while those on the Turtle Mountain Reservation have less power, the meaning of Thomas’s last name, Wazhashk, muskrat, points toward how they will ultimately defeat Arthur Watkins: through industrious, unglamorous hard work.
Themes
