#this is why i have a tattoo of lilacs
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.
having just re-read this book, I feel like Lu-Tse tells us very plainly what the stakes are. he says that nowhere in all the quantum multiverse is there a universe in which Sam Vimes, as he is now, kills his wife. and that little phrase, ‘as he is now,’ is the crux, and it is emphasized even in the original text.
and then it is repeated later on, this idea that there is no universe where Sam Vimes, as he is now, as in this Sam Vimes, our Sam Vimes, wouldn’t do every damn thing he could to fight for these men and do the job in front of him.
so what would happen, then, if Sam Vimes – or John Keel – didn’t fight? if he said “the hells with it” and walked away? young Sam wouldn’t grow into our Sam at all. none of the future would exist. and maybe there would be universes spawned in which Sam Vimes would kill his wife. would go corrupt. would go like Carcer, for that matter, because Carcer, as he tells us, is just a man whose Beast doesn’t have a leash. Sam’s Beast does. Sam can call his when he needs it, and send it back into the dark.
but what if it didn’t? what if Sam Vimes didn’t have those controls? can you imagine what he’d be capable of? so yes. that is what is at stake. Keel!Vimes has to fight, even knowing the outcome, because in a very literal way, he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes if he didn’t. because he wouldn’t grow up to beSam Vimes as he is now. he’d grow up to be another Carcer.
