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Perfume
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 home, when Thomas steps inside, Rose is busy ironing. She’d asked for a plug-in iron before they had had electricity. It didn’t quite make sense to buy one, but Thomas bought it anyway, and Rose guarded it and kept it shined like a trophy. Later, Thomas wakes up at 11:04 p.m. to go to work. He’s been a night watchman for seven months. At first, he could do his role as chairman of the Turtle Mountain Advisory Committee in the afternoons and evenings, but now that the government has introduced its bill, he has more and more work. In the newspaper, he reads that the United States Congress intends to “emancipate” Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and Thomas thinks of the treaties that his father and grandfather had signed and that were supposed to last in perpetuity.
Again, the actual intentions of the Termination Bill are shrouded by language that connotes empowerment, and the word “emancipate” specifically aims to link the Termination Bill with the Emancipation Proclamation in the minds of people in the 1950s. The supporters and writers of the Termination Bill can hide their racism by claiming to be acting in the best interest of the people they aim to harm and against whom they are prejudiced. This is part of why Erdrich may have written a novel focusing on this period of history in the 21st century, and why she opens and closes the novel with nonfiction segments situating the events of the novel in a historical context; through Erdrich’s telling, it becomes clear that the same kinds of tactics are still used in politics and political discourse to this day and that the events of the novel both directly impact, and are in communication with, the present moment.
Themes
