Night, Mother

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1998

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Part Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Gun

Anton Chekhov, a significant playwright in the realism and naturalism movements, argued that a gun that appears onstage in the first act must be fired by the end of the play. Although this dramatic principle also functions as a metaphor for the necessity of curating details and story elements so that nothing is superfluous or gratuitous, it can also be taken literally. Once Jessie retrieves the gun from the attic, even after she removes it from view, the existence of a loaded gun makes a dramatic promise. It must be fired, at least metaphorically, which means that the story must resolve it as a dramatic element. Likewise, most of Chekhov’s major plays resolve the promise of the gun with a character’s suicide (Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya) or a death by shooting (Three Sisters).

In ’Night, Mother, the playwright employs conventions of naturalism, so the promise of the gun is significant as a nod to Chekhov. However, in postmodern theatre, playwrights don’t always conform to genre conventions. The gun must be resolved, but audiences have become accustomed to solutions that deliberately defy predictability. Audiences expect dynamic characters—characters who change during the story, usually because of the action. Therefore, a conclusion in which a character who promised suicide in the first moments of a play follows through and commits suicide in the play’s last moments may be the most surprising choice.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

9,150+ In-Depth Study Guides
4,650+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
Downloadable PDFs

The choice of a gun for Jessie’s suicide is also symbolically suggestive. Jessie specifically chooses to use her father’s gun, connecting his life and his choices to her decision to die. Additionally, shooting is a direct, immediate way of committing suicide, unlike other methods that allow time for intervention or reversal. Statistically, women attempt suicide at least as often as men, but they are more likely to choose less direct methods that minimize traumatic cleanup for their loved ones. Therefore, women are less likely to complete suicide. Jessie’s choice of a gun suggests that she’s determined to succeed. She also gathers old towels and trash bags to avoid a mess. This foreshadows the end of the play, when she demonstrates that it was never possible for her mother to convince her to do anything else.

Seizures or Fits

Until her mother’s confession, Jessie believed that her seizures were the result of a horseback riding accident. This belief played a significant part in destroying her marriage because Jessie agreed to go horseback riding as part of her immense effort to overcome her mental illnesses and leave the house for the sake of her relationship with Cecil. However, after the accident, Cecil felt guilty, and Jessie grew more afraid of venturing out. Even beyond the ramifications in her marriage, Jessie’s belief that the seizures were new prompted her to isolate herself in her mother’s house. She became too fearful to go anywhere or find a job. The medication she eventually started taking, phenobarbital, has been available as an anti-seizure drug since the early 1900s. If Thelma had taken Jessie back to the doctor when she continued to have seizures rather than covering them up, Jessie’s life might have been completely different.

Thelma used the word “fit” to describe Jessie’s seizures—and those her late husband likely experienced—to minimize their gravity. As she tells Jessie, “A seizure in the hospital is a fit at home” (38). “Fit” is an old-fashioned word, vaguer and more discreet than the proper medical term. Thelma coped with her own disappointments by using language to shape her reality. When she wasn’t talking about the seizures, she could imagine that they weren’t happening. Similarly, she could create wild stories to make Agnes more interesting or brighten Ricky’s future. She attempted to use language to force Jessie to live by placing her at Loretta’s future birthday celebration, but Jessie defied her. Thelma went to great lengths to pretend that the seizures weren’t an ongoing, serious issue because she feared feeling that her family was abnormal. She also hated the seizures as one more way that Jessie was like her father.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

9,150+ In-Depth Study Guides
4,650+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
Downloadable PDFs

When Jessie and Thelma finally have an open, honest conversation about the seizures, they demonstrate that they view them—like most issues in their lives—from strikingly different perspectives. They’re both surprised to learn what the other experiences. Jessie’s experience of a seizure was a moment of dizziness and then a disorienting leap forward in time in which she woke up in pain, in different clothes, and in a new location. Thelma tried to keep Jessie from hurting herself but then went even further to try to make it seem as if the seizures never happened. A seizure was a complete loss of control for Jessie, and while Thelma may not have been able to stop Jessie’s seizures, she could attempt to control the aftermath.

The Attic

At the play’s beginning, Jessie’s search for her father’s gun leads her to the attic. As in typical family households, Thelma’s attic is a crowded storage space, a place to stow belongings or mementos not suitable for display or use but not ready for the trash. In addition, most attics are not climate-controlled or particularly clean, which poses a risk that the possessions stored there will break down or molder with age. Everything stored in the attic remains out of sight (and out of mind), hidden behind a trap door in the ceiling. In ’Night, Mother, the belongings in the attic symbolize the parts of their lives that Thelma has chosen to hide and ignore. Over the course of the play, Thelma and Jessie unpack the literal and metaphorical boxes of their lives and histories.

Jessie begins this unpacking process by locating the gun, which has been gathering dust in her father’s old shoebox since Thelma unceremoniously disposed of the shoes it contained. Thelma relegated all her late husband’s belongings to the attic, including the fishing boots that he wore when he pretended to go fishing. Jessie also notices an old milk can, a butter churn, and a wagon wheel, previously useless relics that have regained value for their antique aesthetic. The attic is a treasure trove and a trash heap of family history. For years, the gun was a dormant danger for Jessie to inherit, just as she inherited epilepsy and so many other qualities from her father.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

9,150+ In-Depth Study Guides
4,650+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
Downloadable PDFs

Just as the family’s secrets are precariously contained, the attic is, in Jessie’s estimation, ready to collapse into the house. Instead of a solid floor, it has only a few boards to walk on. Thelma asserts, “It’s plenty safe! As long as you don’t go up there” (11), much like her secrets might stay hidden forever if no one tries to pry them apart. In contrast, Jessie remembers the solid, permanently durable wooden structures that Cecil built. However, Cecil left and took his stability with him. Jessie describes what her son inherited from her as a distrust of the world, walking “as if there’s loose boards in the floor” (40), a floor that she takes responsibility for laying. At the end of the play, Jessie fits her own legacy into a box, including gifts to her mother that represent a microcosm of the attic—small gifts that are meaningless, large gifts that are meaningful, and gifts that Thelma believes she’s lost or never even knew she had.