“People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with a problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.”
Damn! Damn! Damn! Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days …”
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 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 done 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 to 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 notdoing it. So he digs his heels in and makes whatever difference he can in the moment.
BecauseNight 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.
Vimes comes to understand that it’s not a choice between happy endings–past revolution or future family. As a grown man with a better understanding, he sees 1. the revolution is bound to fail, but it plants important seeds for the people to demand more from their City and 2. if he focuses on getting out alive, he won’t have a future to come back to, and most importantly, 3. not only will Sam not grow into the man Sybil falls for, who can look himself in the mirror, Vimes will have decided not to be that man.
And the revolution still fails, but it fails differently, in a way that plants more seeds for a better City, in a way that saves his future family as a side-effect, because it’s not about the future as a thing that justifies your choices, it’s about making the present you’re in count as much as it can, mucking out the torture cells, forging community from distrust, bringing another block inside the barricades. That’s what saves you, in the end.
I put this in the queue a year ago to remind myself of these thoughts about a book, these truths about life, and damn, past me really did future me a solid here.
This isn’t because Burger King is nicer in Denmark. It’s the law, and the US is actually the only so-called “developed” country that doesn’t mandate jobs provide a minimum amount of paid vacation, sick leave, or both.
kinda debunks that claim that they can’t afford to pay their workers those sort of wages and still make a profit
Its corporate greed, plain and simple.
It is the same in Sweden. It is so funny every time an american company opens up offices here and then tries to do it the american way and all the unions go “I don’t think so”.
They refused to sign on to the union deals that govern such things as pay/pension and vacation in Sweden. Most of our rights are not mandated by law (we don’t have a minimum wage for example) but are made in voluntary agreements between the unions and the companies.
But they refused, saying that they had never negotiated with any unions anywhere else in the world and weren’t planning to do it in Sweden either.
Of course a lot of people thought it was useless fighting against an international giant, but Handels (the store worker’s union) said that they could not budge, because that might mean that the whole Swedish model might crumble. So they went on strike in the three stores that the company had opened so far.
Cue a shitstorm from the press, and from right wing politicians. But the members were all for it, and other unions started doing sympathy actions. The teamsters refused to deliver goods to their stores, the financial unions blockaded all economical transactions regarding Toys ‘r Us and the strike got strong international support as well, especially in the US.
In the end, Toys ‘r Us caved in, signed the union deal, and thus their employees got the same treatment as Swedish store workers everywhere.
The right to be treated as bloody human beings and not disposable cogs in a machine.
and that story right there? is exactly why Republicans in the US work so hard to bust unions. it’s because unionizing WORKS and they’re terrified of workers actually having some power.
“Now, this is a soldier’s song, see? You don’t look like soldiers but by the gods I’ll see you sounds like ‘em! You’ll pick it up as we goes along! Right turn! March! 'All the little angels rise up, rise up, all the little angels rise up high!’ Sing it, you sons of mothers!”
The marchers picked up the response from those who knew it.
“How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high? They rise headsup,headsup,heads up–” sang out Dickens as they turned the corner.
Vimes listened as the refrain died away.
“That’s a nice song,” said young Sam, and Vimes realized that he was hearing it for the first time.
“It’s an old soldier’s song,” he said.
“Really, Sarge? But it’s about angels.”
Yes, thought Vimes, and it’s amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It’s a realsoldiers’ song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
“As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,” he said. “I’ve seen old men cry when they sing it,” he added.
“Why? It sounds cheerful.”
They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You’ll learn. I knowyou will.
HappyTowel Day! Time to grab your favorite towel and contemplate hard-boiled eggs and the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!
