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Prayer for 1954
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
Even as a ghost, Roderick is never going to be assimilated. He wouldn’t go to a white heaven or a white hell. He’d gone to Paranteau’s funeral, thinking he might be able to follow him to the afterlife. It’s hard to not be assimilated all alone, he thinks, and he hopes he can go home.
Even as a ghost, Roderick doesn’t want to lose his identity to what he sees as irreducibly “white” alternatives. He’s lonely, but, in an attempt to find the last vestiges of agency, he seems to say that it’s better to be lonely, to be a ghost, than to give up on existing.
Themes
