58 pages • 1 hour read
Tracy SierraNightwatching
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Individual Responses to Trauma
Content Warning: Both the source material and this guide contain descriptions of traumatic experiences, emotional and physical abuse towards women, bullying of a person with a skin condition, and violent death.
A trauma response is a reaction to danger or a perceived threat and is an involuntary reflex based on survival instincts. All people respond to trauma physically, emotionally, and cognitively, but trauma responses vary greatly depending on individual temperament, specific circumstances, biological makeup, and available support systems. The mother’s flashbacks portray her as a person who has always been hypervigilant, something for which her husband criticizes her. Her history of trauma causes her to experience severe responses to new traumatic events, such as when her college boyfriend surprises her and causes her to collapse on the floor in fear. Because she always reacts to trauma with shock and silence, her first glimpse of the intruder causes her to exhibit a freeze response. Whereas others might go into the fight-or-flight response, her coping mechanism works in her favor because it keeps her hidden. However, as the story progresses, the mother’s trauma response evolves, for she realizes that she must act decisively as the situation changes. Ultimately, she emerges as a heroic person who overcomes her initial fear response, and her self-sacrificial actions reveal the lengths to which mothers will go in order to protect their children.
While hiding with the children, the mother experiences physical symptoms of trauma response such as bladder urgency, gastrointestinal distress, and extreme fatigue, and these details reveal the author’s familiarity with the topic and imbue the novel with a sense of verisimilitude. As the story unfolds, the mother’s thoughts reveal that after her husband's death, she has also experienced changes in sleep patterns and a loss of appetite, both of which have eroded her physical and mental health. Now, she is like a frayed nerve, underweight and chronically under-rested and fighting to maintain mental clarity despite her diminished condition. While managing her response, the mother must also help her children cope with their own trauma responses so that their cries will not alert the intruder to their presence.
In addition to examining the immediate effects of trauma, the novel also explores its long-term effects. The hospital psychiatrist becomes an avatar of this theme when he tells the mother, “Trauma doesn’t end when the trauma ends. Everyone’s past forms their present” (213). Losing her mother tragically at an early age left an impact on the mother’s life, and she has never forgotten the experience of being in the courtroom and hearing the details of her mother’s death. Having endured people’s negative attention towards her vitiligo, the mother finds herself being retraumatized each time someone looks at her or comments on her skin. Her father-in-law is also emotionally and physically abusive, and his words and the sting of his hand remain lodged in her psyche. Intrusive thoughts of her past trauma flood the mother’s mind as she endures her present calamity, making it difficult for her to make sound decisions. Once the mother neutralizes the threat against her and reunites with her children, she acknowledges that the experience has forever altered them.
The Vulnerability of Women
Despite achieving some progress toward gender equality, women frequently face dangers that result from deeply rooted, misogynistic societal norms, cultural practices, and institutional systems. Through the perspective of one woman fighting to protect her family, Nightwatching examines the physical, emotional, and psychological vulnerability that women experience due to patterns of abuse, systemic discrimination, and cycles of oppression. From the onset, the protagonist in the story is portrayed as a woman who is constrained by the expectations of male authority figures. Her flashbacks reveal a lifetime of acceding to the patriarchy and remaining small and silent in order to adhere to societal expectations of how a woman “should” behave. A self-defense instructor once told her, “Women are conditioned to be quiet, not to make noise” (76), and his comment inherently disempowers her, reinforcing the belief that she has no recourse to the violent or threatening actions of the men around her. She experiences emotional abuse in her marriage from both her husband and his father, and she endures her husband’s habit of “examining her behavior, searching for signs she was socially blunted” (121). Thus, the mother’s lifetime of trauma influences her responses to her current situation, as she has been conditioned to endure abuse in silence. Though less visible than physical abuse, the men’s words erode her self-esteem and sense of autonomy. The fear of retaliation and societal stigma silences her further, trapping her in a cycle of abuse that allows her father-in-law to get away with physically assaulting her.
Although the Corner is a real physical threat, he also symbolizes her lack of control over her own life and body as he traps her and the children in their home with few options for escape. The physical manifestation of the Corner personifies the pervasive and insidious threats that constrain and threaten women, and his malicious yet unseen presence serves as a metaphor for the real-world dangers that keep women in a perpetual state of vulnerability. Unlike the actions of her husband and father-in-law, the Corner is a visible threat that the mother can attack. Still, as the story progresses, she realizes that she is also battling against unseen threats such as attacks against her credibility and mental health and accusations that she is unable to parent her children. Because she is a widow and a single mother, the protagonist is isolated and is therefore more susceptible to manipulation and control by male authority figures.
When the mother’s physical and emotional exhaustion prevents her from expressing herself clearly, the sergeant undermines and dismisses her testimony. In response to his dismissal of her fears that the Corner is after her daughter, she says, “Ask the women you know what it was like being a little girl” (225). The mother’s physical vulnerability is exacerbated by her psychological distress, making her more vulnerable to self-doubt, confusion, and anxiety, which only makes her appear more erratic. Her interiority reveals her fear when she bitterly reflects, “And it’s simple to say a woman is crazy” (341). The mother’s plight highlights the danger of victim-blaming and silencing female voices, for such biases bring about a miscarriage of justice. Despite the pervasive theme of vulnerability, the story also highlights the resilience and agency of its female protagonist. The mother’s journey is designed to be empowering, as the home invasion forces her to confront her fears and assert control over the situation.
The Interplay of Perception and Reality
The novel opens with an epigraph from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown,” which states, “I have a very general acquaintance here in New England.” The quote refers to Goodman Brown’s perception of his pious Puritan neighbors. His perception is challenged when he thinks that he sees them worshipping the devil in the woods, and he undergoes an intense internal battle to determine if what he sees is true. Like Goodman Brown, the protagonist in Nightwatching illustrates how easily new, unsettling insights can upend a person’s beliefs and disrupt their worldview, regardless of whether those insights are grounded in reality or exist only in the shadows of the mind. In the beginning, the question of whether the mother’s perception accurately represents the reality of her situation drives the narrative. This tension creates suspenseful situations and examines the human experience of having a tenuous grasp on the truth. The house itself, with its shifting shadows, creaky floors, and hidden spaces, represents the deceptive nature of appearances. Its convoluted, layered structure mirrors the mother’s journey through her own mind as she attempts to uncover the identity and motives of the Corner. The novel's interplay of light and darkness symbolizes the contrast between knowledge and ignorance, further emphasizing the elusive nature of reality. At first, the mother only experiences the Corner through light and shadows. While hidden in the secret room, she must rely on her other senses to perceive him as he moves throughout their house, but because she is reduced to this elusive evidence of the reality that threatens her family, she wonders if she can really trust her senses.
The mother’s flashbacks to her traumatic experiences explain her vulnerability and her heightened sense of fear, reflecting her struggle to reconcile how her past connects to the present. Temporal shifts in the narrative disorient the reader and mirror the protagonist’s psychological state. The abrupt shifts further blur the lines between perception and truth. The fluidity of time in the narrative creates a dreamlike quality, making it difficult for the mother—and by extension, the reader—to discern what is real. Even the author’s diction is designed to make reality itself warp and bend, for as the narrative states, “Time was broken. Space didn’t look right; it kept rolling and shifting and the house had run away” (147). After her husband’s death, the mother and her children experience events that challenge their understanding of reality, leading the children to think that their father is haunting the house and causing the mother to doubt the state of her own mental health. Ghostly apparitions, unexplained phenomena, and eerie occurrences create an atmosphere of uncertainty in the home. These uncanny events collectively symbolize the broader theme of discerning hidden truths and distinguishing reality from imagination.
The mother becomes an increasingly unreliable narrator as she questions her own perceptions, particularly as her trauma responses to trauma distract her from clear thinking. Her internal monologues also reveal her struggle to trust her senses, blurring the line between reality and imagination. This subjectivity damages the narrative's reliability. Highlighting the fact that personal biases can distort a person’s understanding of the truth, the sergeant engages in psychological manipulation by forcing the mother to doubt her memories and sense of reality. Later, when she gives her account of what happened, the sergeant systematically refutes her perceptions and discounts the fact that she heard the intruder’s movements. Ultimately, the mother's perceptions are proved true by the existence of the game camera footage. By blurring the lines between what is perceived and what is real, the story becomes a maze of uncertainty, heightening the suspense and tension and adding psychological depth to the mother’s character.
