Night Watch: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3, Chapters 11-19

Part 3, Chapter 20-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Trauma and Its Long-Term Effects

Night Watch revolves around the traumas of the main characters, and the broken timeline of the novel emphasizes the lasting effects of those traumas. The traumas of the novel are inherently tied to the idea of invasion, with Papa invading the ridge, invading Eliza’s home, and physically invading Eliza and ConaLee through sexual assault. These invasions frame trauma as a fundamental issue of self-defense and self-perception after the initial trauma takes place, and the novel is essentially an exploration of Eliza and ConaLee’s struggle to overcome their traumas. Eliza struggles with her own construction of identity after feeling like she failed to protect herself and her daughter, while ConaLee suffers “fits” to protect herself from a trauma she does not fully realize. For both characters, there is no clear resolution to the long-term effects of their trauma. Instead, they each find their own methods for recovery and tranquility in their new lives.

Early in the novel, ConaLee recalls Dearbhla’s advice regarding Papa: “Hear me, ConaLee. No matter what that man do, you fly to me in your mind. I hold you until he go away” (36). Dearbhla’s recommendation is that ConaLee try to actively black out her own experience to protect her psyche from the trauma of Papa’s assaults. In effect, this method is parallel to Eliza’s own form of protection, which is to become blank and mute, removing some of Papa’s satisfaction. For ConaLee, the trauma is almost entirely blocked from her memory, and she notes, “I would have such sleeps and wake up where I’d been, only time had slipped, a little time or more” (7). Nonetheless, images like Papa’s hand periodically invade her mind, making her “see lights.” Eliza, on the other hand, reveals to ConaLee that Eliza only pretends to be “insane,” meaning she has full memory of the trauma she has suffered.

Over the course of the novel, ConaLee and Eliza move past one another, with Eliza slowly recovering from her trauma and ConaLee slowly discovering the trauma she blocked out. Eliza looks younger over time in the asylum, and she ultimately succeeds in remarrying and forming a new life with Dr. Story. ConaLee struggles to overcome her trauma, and the novel implies that aspects of her trauma will never leave her. In the Epilogue, ConaLee reveals, “She no longer saw lights, or lost pieces of time, but early losses still pained her” (272). ConaLee knows that she will not have children, which is directly linked to her experiences with Papa, Eliza, the chap, and the twins. Regardless of ConaLee’s struggle to understand herself, she adopts Weed and the chap in an attempt to build the life she could have had without Papa’s interference in her development, enabling herself to heal and take charge of her life on her own terms.

The Importance of Family

The families in Night Watch are often unconventional, presenting a variety of ways in which family dynamics can both help and hurt in intense situations. A primary force in the narrative is the effect of Ephraim’s absence on Eliza, ConaLee, and Dearbhla, supporting the idea that a complete family unit is important to survival and well-being.

Ephraim, Eliza, and Dearbhla work together to escape the plantation, and their teamwork allows them to form a new home in West Virginia. However, without Ephraim present during the time when Dearbhla goes to Alexandria, Papa makes his first strike against Eliza and ConaLee. Papa’s decision to use the name “Papa” further subverts the normative familial dynamic, reinforcing the importance of healthy family structure by showing how it is better to have no father than an abusive father.

When Papa insults the cabins in which Eliza, Dearbhla, and ConaLee lived, ConaLee tells him that Eliza maintained a larger garden before Papa arrived, adding, “Just to say, Mama wasn’t like she is now” (8). Though ConaLee is noting that Eliza was healthier and more active before Papa came into their lives, Papa subverts Eliza’s meaning, saying, “Good thing I come by when I did” (8). Papa’s performance as ConaLee’s father is fraught with manipulation and deception: He portrays himself as a savior, jumping into ConaLee’s fatherless life to provide necessary structure. However, the essence of family is not tied to the genders of parents but to the love they feel for their family members. By abusing Eliza and ConaLee and removing Dearbhla from their lives, Papa deals a damaging blow to the family dynamic that helped Eliza, Ephraim, and Dearbhla survive the West Virginia Mountains.

In a sense, the remainder of the novel functions as an extended search to rebuild the family Papa destroyed, as Eliza and ConaLee hold tight to each other for support. In an instance of dramatic irony, Dr. Story notes how close ConaLee and Eliza are, not realizing that they are mother and daughter. He observes, “Chosen family […] sometimes grow closer in sympathy than any other” (227), and this observation defines the role of family as a survival mechanism in the novel. Eliza ultimately finds her support and love in Dr. Story, just as ConaLee finds her home with Weed. Even supporting characters like Hexum and Dearbhla emphasize the importance of finding family, supporting them, and giving and receiving love in strenuous situations.

The Societal Impacts of War

Night Watch discusses two distinct impacts of the Civil War outside of the physical battles fought during the war. The first is the way tension between the North and South affected individual identity, dividing people into those on the side of the Union and those on the side of the Confederacy. The second is the loss experienced by families across the country, as fathers, brothers, and sons never returned home or returned significantly altered by the trauma of war. Both issues were widespread during and after the Civil War, and Phillips crafts the novel around the topic of the war, even though the war is not directly addressed much beyond the battle at Saunders Field. Instead, the war is ever-present in the minds of the characters, influencing the way they see each other and emerging at unexpected and emotional moments.

Approaching the asylum, ConaLee notes that she knows from Papa that “West Virginia has betrayed the South and stood for the Union” (18). She further adds, “If Papa was for the South, I was for the Union, and Mama was surely with me” (18). ConaLee’s perspective as a 13-year-old is insightful, as she highlights the way individuals identified around the factions of the war. By using the phrasing “for the South” and “for the Union,” ConaLee is exposing the way people align themselves and their perceptions of others around the conflict. In fact, Papa’s presence in the novel as the only explicit Confederate sympathizer marks him as an antagonist, and his insistence that West Virginia “betrayed” the South plays into his role as an unreliable character in the text. As ConaLee fights to escape Papa’s influence, she is also representing the people of border states in the conflict who, like Eliza and ConaLee, were victims of the overextension of the war into towns and homes away from the battlefield.

The most intense of the effects the war had on Reconstruction society is undoubtedly the huge loss of life that destroyed families. Over 700,000 soldiers died in the war, and many characters in the text reveal how those deaths did not stay on the battlefield, traveling home to their families filled with grief. Mrs. Gordon, for example, tells the unconscious O’Shea about her sons who died in the war, just as Mrs. Paine explains the loss of her brothers at Gettysburg to ConaLee. For Mrs. Paine, even though her husband returned from the war, he “struggled to be himself” (274). ConaLee closing Ephraim’s account is a momentous occasion for Mrs. Paine and the town of Weston, representing the end of the uncertainty and grief brought about by the conflict.