Every year May 25th comes around and every year I have the need to put into words just why this book stayed with me for so long. But mostly it comes down to this: despite Night Watch’s sudden shift to a darker, heavier dark tone, it avoids being unnecessarily cruel to its characters just for the sake of plot. And of course, this is true of all the Discworld books, people striving to be better, to do better, but I think it’s significant in context of how dark this book is – especially since going by chronological reading order, this is the bleakest book we encounter up until this point.
This Ankh-Morpork that we’re submerged in is so alien at that point in her timeline, it’s gruesome and cruel and oppressive because it’s under a gruesome, cruel and oppressive tyrant. Yet despite that, there is still kindness in the heart of the book – it values old Vimes’ mercy and young Sam’s innocence, it values the fact that Vimes wants to avoid undue violence, to save as many as he can,
and shield people from the tyranny for as long as he can.
It’s such an emotionally charged book and there is a lot of darkness in the story itself- a blood-thirsty serial killer, power-hungry men,
ruthless paranoia, and the awful, inhumane underbelly of a regime – but
where most other books would have so, it avoids traumatizing its characters just to establish that. Darker shifts in tone so often entails that the narrative doles out meaningless suffering and trauma just establish itself Night Watch ultimately avoids that, because it uses other means to make the text feel heavy and oppressive. Part of it is from the plot itself, in that Vimes knows what happens behind closed doors, he know what Swing is capable of and the knowledge of that threat is high-risk enough to let readers know of the stakes.
The main emotional conflict instead comes from Vimes battling with himself, reconciling with wanting to go home versus, well, Sam Vimes being Sam Vimes, which means doing his best at saving everyone, history, timeline and causality be damned. We know that young Sam will become cynical and bitter and drunk somewhere down the line, we know that half the Night Watchmen will die, we know that the city will remain cruel despite this Hail Mary attempt at revolution. Which is why the narrative is so intent on telling us that Vimes’ kindness matters – in mentoring young Sam, in getting the prisoners off the Hurry-Up Wagon, in preventing undue riots and undue brutality, in keeping the fighting away from Barricade as long as possible. The city’s going to hell in a hand basket, might as well make people’s lives easier.
Vimes can’t save Ankh-Morpork from history taking its due course, but the powerful emotional catharsis is seeing him coming to the decision to try and save everyone anyway – simply because he can’t envision himself not doing it. So he digs his heels in and makes whatever difference he can in the moment.
Because Night Watch in an inevitable tragedy – only one of the two stories can have a happy ending and in order for Sam Vimes to go back to the present, to his wife and his son and his Watch and his city, the revolution has to fail or else that timeline ceases to exist. There is no way for him to save both his men and his future but he’ll be damned if it doesn’t try – he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes otherwise. Every time it I re-read it still feels like he’s that close to succeeding.
It could have so easily been grimdark and ~gritty~ but ultimately it avoids because it centres on a few basic themes that forms the core in the story. The heart of it is about camaraderie of a handful of men too weird and incompetent and ugly, the tentative hope in the uprising, and the sheer bloody determination of Sam Vimes’ refusal to give up on the people around him.
I just also want to throw in – since there’s no better time to do it than the 25th of May – that one of my favorite thing about Night Watch is that it’s a book about consequences. The consequences of the past on the present, sure, but also the consequences of corruption, of revolution, of our behavior towards and about one another. And while that would be enough on its own, this beautiful brutal kindhearted story, my favorite thing about Night Watch is that the ENTIRE book is actually a consequence of the book before it – Thief of Time. If you haven’t ever done yourself the favor of reading these two books back to back, I HIGHLY recommend it; for one thing, Lu-Tze and Susan and Lobsang are three of my favorite characters ever, and for another, Thief of Time’s conceptualization of time itself is really beautiful and fascinating and, in its way, haunting. Like Night Watch, it’s a beautiful book on its own, but like Night Watch, it is best read with its partner.
The point being, this is a great post and it should feel great BUT ALSO pls read Thief of Time, because all the good things about Night Watch are only amplified when you’ve read them both. (I mean, for one thing, it will leave you with the happy knowledge that history shattered, and despite having no part in causing that or even knowing it had happened, Sam Vimes still ended up cleaning up a big chunk of the mess, because OF COURSE HE DID. Ugh, Sir Terry, you beautiful genius, I hope you are resting in peace. Thank you for helping ensure I live in interesting times.)
Aw Yiss 