The Psychological Effects of Illness Theme Analysis

 “Night” demonstrates how illness can affect one’s psyche and alter one’s thinking about the world. The story begins with an invocation of illness, starting with the narrator’s line, “when I was young, there seemed to be never a childbirth, or a burst appendix, or any other drastic event that did not occur simultaneously with a snowstorm.” This quote links medical emergencies with other “storms” in life, highlighting the severity of both illness and the climate in the world of the narrator. The narrator’s own appendectomy serves as a reminder of the fragility of life, though the reminder surfaces in a shocking way. After her operation, the narrator begins to have involuntary thoughts about killing her sister Catherine, suggesting that the brush with mortality has brought a consciousness of death into her everyday life. The introduction of death into her life brings, in turn, a loss of innocence—she transitions from a carefree childhood to a discomfort with herself and her capacity for dark thoughts that she must learn to live with. Though the narrator’s father suggests that surgical ether caused the unwanted thoughts and this comforts her for the time being, the narrator’s illness forces her to confront her psyche and the darkness in the world in a deeper way than before. Through the narrator’s early encounters with illness and its subsequent psychological struggles, Munro suggests that illness can force people to wrestle with unsettling truths about themselves and their place in the world.