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The Night Watch
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
The congressional hearings for the Termination Bill are scheduled for the first week in March. Millie had never been to a funeral like that of Paranteau before. And as the proceedings took place in Chippewa, she realized that when she conducted her study, people had spoken in English for her benefit. Barnes sits in what he thinks of as his monk cell, thinking of the three women he has feelings for. Juggie is upset when Wood Mountain unthinkingly shows her the cradle board to admire what he made for the baby. While having sex with Norbert, Betty Pye sees someone’s face in the window of the car he borrowed from her mother. She knows the face but can’t quite place it. Louis considers it a sacred mission of his to get every person on the reservation to sign the petition.
As two months pass, different characters go through their own trials and tribulations. Millie begins to see that while her father, Louis, is a central member of the community, because she grew up away, she is still considered an outsider. And Louis, for his part, continues his work to get as many people as possible to sign the petition.
Themes
Thomas thinks they have two months to save their homeland and themselves but finds himself unable to focus on his work. It’s because he’s afraid, he thinks. Just before Christmas, Patrice’s eyes begin to smart. She bathes them in medicine in secret at her job, afraid that if someone finds out, she’ll lose it. Millie enters words into her notebook. The same word is used for both ejaculation and shooting off a gun: baashkizige. The word for condom and gun case is also the same: biinda’oojigan. She thinks it’s fascinating. People keep asking LaBatte to get them things, but he tells them he doesn’t do that anymore. He thinks Patrice has a jinx on her though. He can tell because of her eyes.
Patrice’s health difficulties with her eyesight highlight the precariousness of her job. That job functions in the opposite way that a supportive community does. Instead of offering to help Patrice or acting in solidarity with her, she knows that if people in power at the jewel bearing plant found out what was happening to her, they would fire her. Millie also makes connections between sex and violence in the Chippewa language.
Themes
