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A Bill
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
At work the next night, Thomas reads through the bill again. He thinks about all that Native people have survived—smallpox, the Winchester repeating rifle, the Hotchkiss rifle, tuberculosis—and thinks they’ll ultimately be defeated by a collection of tedious words. He drifts off to sleep, and when he wakes up, he hears an owl. He goes outside to see it more clearly. Later, next to his time stamp, which is a few minutes late and should have been punched on the hour, he writes, “Went outside to answer Snowy Owl’s question, Who? Owl not satisfied with answer.”
Thomas compares the physical violence Native people have endured to the latest political and bureaucratic attempt to eliminate them. On the surface, the political tactics might seem less violent, but if they were to be more successful than all past attempts to eliminate Native people, then the violence contained in those tactics becomes clear.
Themes
