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.
Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
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.
The unnamed mother is in her son’s room in the middle of the night. She hears strange sounds and thinks that her daughter must be using the restroom or sleepwalking, but then remembers that her daughter is locked in her room to prevent her from accidentally falling down the stairs. When the mother looks at the security camera monitor that her husband installed, she sees a strange man ascending the stairs. The mother cycles through a flurry of emotions, from panic to denial, and wonders if she is dreaming. She even feels guilty, believing that she is somehow responsible for the home invasion. A snowstorm has brought two feet of snow to the area, but the intruder is wearing sneakers, and the mother sees this as a sign of a planned attack since he should be wearing snow boots. Frozen with terror and concern for her children, the mother watches the man on the screen, evaluating his body language and discerning what he might do next.
Chapter 2 Summary
The mother’s son has been having nightmares since the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown began and always goes to his mother for comfort. She has fallen into a pattern of walking him back to his room, singing to him, and rubbing his back until he falls asleep. Now, she is trapped between her son’s room and hers as the intruder climbs the stairs.
The intruder is wearing white gloves and carrying a weapon, but the mother cannot identify it. Racking her brain to find an escape route, she considers the precarious layout of her antiquated home, which has a modernized addition. The man stands between her and any access to a phone, and she cannot reach the gun that is hidden in her late husband’s closet. There is no way to escape the house safely. Even if she were to do so, the nearest home is miles away, and the area is buried in snow. From the intruder’s image on the screen, she can tell that he is larger than her, and with “[Her] weakened, waifish self” (8), she ascertains that she cannot match him in a fight. The man approaches the addition at the top of the stairs and enters her empty bedroom. Empowered by an intense desire to save herself and her children, the mother unfreezes as she remembers “the hidden place” (11).
Chapter 3 Summary
The mother’s home is 300 years old and was renovated from its original design. When previous owners encased the original fireplace, it created a small, hidden space inside the wall of what is now used as the office behind the beehive oven. When the mother and her husband bought the home, the sellers showed them how to access the space by pulling on the wall panel. They explained their guess as to why it exists, surmising that the space was used for “[t]he Underground Railroad, or maybe a place to hide from natives […] Our kids, of course, say it’s haunted” (17). Later, the mother and her husband cleaned the space, removing an old heater.
Now, the mother scoops up her sleeping son and carries him to her daughter’s room. Bidding her daughter to be silent, she tells her that they must all hide because someone is in the house. They creep down the house’s creaky front staircase, which the children use to access their rooms and playroom. Inside her husband’s office, the mother opens the secret panel, revealing the dark space, but both children cry and refuse to go inside. Suddenly, they hear the man walking upstairs into the daughter’s room, and when the mother urges them inside to hide from the “monster,” they don’t protest.
Chapter 4 Summary
The hidden space is so dark that it reminds the mother of a cave she once visited. She hits her head on something and nearly faints from the blow. Ignoring her pain, the mother swaddles the children in blankets, whispering comforting words and imploring them to remain silent. With the secret panel secured, she thinks, “We are invisible now” (23). Suddenly, they can hear the intruding walking overhead and descending the stairs. Through the old heater vent, the mother can see the intruder’s feet on the stairs and worries that he can see them. She glimpses her cell phone in his back pocket, and she can see that he isn’t wearing a coat despite the weather conditions. He walks through the children’s playroom, and when the daughter hears him crash one of her Lego creations, she gasps, and the boy silently sobs. The daughter whispers that she thought it might be her dad, but she now knows that he isn’t. The mother briefly fantasizes that the man is her late husband and that he has returned home to find them hiding in the crawlspace. She determines that it would be much easier to defend her irrational fear of him than to endure the current horror that has beset her family. Her son says that she promised him that monsters aren’t real, and she confesses that she lied.
Chapter 5 Summary
When she and her husband began dating in college, he changed his major from pre-law to photography. Her father-in-law blamed this choice on her and ridiculed her vitiligo, calling her “disfigured.” Her husband became a buffer between her and his father’s cruelty, but her father-in-law never missed a chance to wound her with his words. Having never been close to her own family, the mother overlooked her father-in-law’s behavior, hoping that she could create the family she had always wanted. Eventually, she became a patent illustrator, and her husband became a successful aerial photographer, but her father-in-law remained cold. After the children were born, he accused her of spoiling their daughter and allowing their sensitive son to become a “mama’s boy.”
Two years ago, her mother-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and they purchased the farmhouse to be closer to her. Although the home was built in 1722 and needed a lot of work, the mother and her husband looked forward to the project as a distraction from the family drama. Now, the mother thinks about how the house was a sanctuary from her in-laws, and at this moment, it has become a shelter for her and her children as they hide from the intruder.
Chapter 6 Summary
The intruder enters the office, and the mother presses her children closer to her as their fear intensifies. She hears him strum her husband’s guitar, and memories of her husband flood her mind. The man calls out to them, telling them to show themselves. At first, he speaks nicely, promising not to hurt them. Speaking as if he is addressing only the children, he claims that he knows about the safe and wants their mother to give him money. The mother is sickened to realize that he knows she is here alone with the children. When his pleas go unanswered, he becomes agitated, paces the floor, and threatens to “bring out the bad guy” (47). He refers to them as “piglets” and insinuates that he will eat them. The mother ascertains that he has a mental illness and tries to calm herself by reasoning that he is only speaking this way to scare them. The intruder exits the room, and the mother realizes that she might never feel safe in her home again.
Chapter 7 Summary
When the intruder moves on to another room, the children begin whispering questions to their mother though she begs them to remain silent. The daughter says that she recognizes his voice as that of “the Corner man” (53) who speaks to her in her dreams and says that he is watching her from the corner of her room. Although the mother admits to herself that there is something familiar about him, she reassures her daughter that he is just a man. She evades their questions and urges them to burrow deeper into the hiding place. Unnerved by her daughter’s comment, the mother thinks that it would be better if he were a monster; she believes it is more terrifying to know that a real man is plundering their home.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
The idea of a home invasion is a universal fear that ignites a primal reaction related to every person’s need to feel safe and to protect their loved ones. Because the story begins in medias res, the very first chapter becomes a complete immersion in the unnamed protagonist’s terror, as well as her experience of Individual Responses to Trauma. Instead of the stereotypical “fight or flight” response, she freezes. Though the mother cycles through a complex web of emotions, her response is predominantly physical as she begins to sweat profusely despite the wintry weather. As the ordeal progresses, she feels physically nauseated and like she might lose control of her bowels. These symptoms are brought on by increased blood flow and stimulation of her parasympathetic nervous system and are designed to prepare her body to flee danger. The author’s meticulous description of these common physiological reactions imbues the narrative with a visceral and realistic sense of panic. However, her physical discomfort also hampers her thinking and decision-making, and this aspect of her reaction emphasizes that although people like to think that they will respond heroically in a tense situation, the onset of imminent danger brings out widely varied reactions. Within the context of the novel, the mother only emerges from her paralyzed state when she realizes that the intruder has a weapon. Seeing this, she knows that she must act quickly to protect herself and the children. As the intensity of the danger increases, the author’s decision to omit all character names stresses the universality of this situation, which could conceivably happen to anyone. This stylistic choice also creates emotional distance from the mother, who proves to be an unreliable narrator.
The narrative also takes on the ominous tones of a horror film as the implicit safety of a home suddenly becomes a prison of terror, fear, and imminent harm upon the invasion of the unknown man. In this moment, the house itself becomes central to the plot, for its complex layout creates unique obstacles for the mother. Additionally, the antiquated home is noisy, and she knows that stepping in certain places will give away her location. As flashbacks reveal the mother’s complicated family dynamics, the house also becomes a symbol of the hidden lives of people. Just as the house holds hidden secrets and buried traumas, the mother’s own history proves to be equally layered and thorny. The tense situation therefore combines with the traumas of the mother’s past to render her an unreliable narrator. As the story progresses, the author creates a sense of uncertainty around the mother’s observations, invoking The Interplay of Perception and Reality. The middle of the night setting also intensifies the mother’s disorientation, and aside from the images on the security camera screen, she must rely primarily on her sense of hearing to assess and respond to the situation. Once locked inside the safe room, she is plunged into utter darkness, and she must rely on her knowledge of the home’s geography and its familiar sounds to mark the intruder’s movements. Even as she physically parses out the intruder’s movements, the mother begins to doubt herself, wondering if she is dreaming or imagining the entire scene. Once she dismisses this thought, she moves on to blaming herself for the current situation, and the author uses this mental shift to imply that the mother’s experience as a woman in an inherently misogynistic society has taught her to doubt her mind and body. Significantly, it is not until the intruder, “the Corner man,” speaks that she fully accepts the reality of her situation. Thus, the confusion of the mother’s inner thoughts adds to the story's suspense; her contemplations are chaotic and peppered with flashbacks, and they fluctuate from lucid to cryptic, as evidenced by her frequent repetition of certain words and phrases.
As these internal uncertainties rage, the mother exemplifies The Vulnerability of Women, for she has always been the primary caregiver for her children, and in the midst of this crisis, she must suppress her own fears and traumas and become her children’s sole protector as well. Her experience of caring for them at night, even when her husband is there, is typical for most women, who are often expected to take on the lion’s share of such caretaking. Additionally, the mother’s flashbacks reveal that her husband asked her to tolerate her father-in-law’s torment in favor of keeping the peace, thereby invalidating her experiences and failing to support her. Thus, her recollections prove that she has always been taken advantage of by those who are supposed to care for her. During her mother-in-law’s illness, her husband also expected her to step in as a caregiver even though she had a job and was already burdened by caring for her children. However, on the night that the intruder arrives, the mother is alone. The gendered ideas around situational awareness and domestic duties traditionally label men as the home protectors, and the absence of her husband forces the mother into the role of defender even as she strives to fulfill her children’s need for motherly comfort and reassurance.
