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11. Night Watch
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in We the Animals, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Belonging
Violence, Aggression, and Love
Support and Caretaking
Masculinity and Coming of Age
Summary
Analysis
When the family’s car dies, Paps goes to the dealership and comes home with a large pickup truck. The boys spot him from afar as he wheels into the neighborhood, and it isn’t long before other young boys and neighbors excitedly crowd around to watch his triumphant approach. Stepping out of the truck, Paps proudly tells his sons that this is the family’s new ride, but the general excitement abates when Ma angrily asks how many seats the truck has. In response, Paps admits that it has a bench instead of seats. Soon enough, Ma berates him for buying an impractical car that is not only too expensive, but also incapable of properly transporting a family of their size. As the neighbors slink away, she yells that Paps bought this car simply because it’s a “big-dick truck.”
When Ma calls Paps’s truck a “big-dick truck,” she addresses his desire to align himself with a stereotypical version of manhood, one that indulges macho fantasies about strength, toughness, and even virility. This, it seems, is everything that Paps represents, since he himself is a large, aggressive man. Furthermore, it’s worth keeping in mind that the narrator listens to his mother criticize the absurdity of this truck, berating Paps’s desire to be seen as tough and ultimately framing his vision of masculinity as an impractical fantasy. Considering that the narrator himself is less stereotypically masculine than his brothers and father, this is an important moment, one that shows him that life doesn’t always reward the values his father holds dear.
Themes
Paps slaps Ma on the side of the head, but she doesn’t stop berating him, yelling, “Big-dick Truck! Big-dick truck!” Seeing how upset she is, he steps toward her and tries to take her in a hug, but she hits his chest over and over. Finally, he tells her that he’ll return the truck, that he understands why she’s upset. But tonight, he says, the family will enjoy it by driving it around so they can always remember the evening they owned a truck. After dinner, then, Ma gets dressed up in a red dress and large gold earrings, and the boys climb into the bed of the truck while Paps proudly drives it through the neighborhood. In the back, the brothers play with toy guns, pretending to shoot down the stars overhead.
Once again, animosity and turbulence lead to a form of joy, as the family piles into the truck and proudly drives it around the neighborhood. The boys know that the truck must be returned, but this knowledge perhaps enables them to fully enjoy the present, urging them to savor happiness while it lasts. In this regard, they allow their contentment to sit alongside their parents’ aggression and hostility, accepting that sometimes it’s impossible to separate joy from unhappiness or disappointment.
Themes
