25 pages • 50 minutes read
Kate ChopinThe Night Came Slowly
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1895A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Allure of Gentleness
Throughout this short piece, Chopin emphasizes the gentleness of nature, especially the night, in contrast to the noise and bluster of human beings—in particular, men. Compared with the delicate touch of nature, man is “bold” and “coarse” (Paragraph 6). While the ugliness of man causes the narrator to suffer, the gentleness has a powerful allure.
All aspects of nature in this piece exhibit grace and a certain carefulness in their interactions with the narrator and with the rest of the natural world. This gentleness, often portrayed through personification, contrasts sharply with any descriptions of humans. For example, the wind is “caressing” (Paragraph 1). It “rippled the maple leaves like little warm love thrills” (Paragraph 5). The night, as the title emphasizes, comes “slowly, softly” (Paragraph 2). It comes “creeping, creeping stealthily” (Paragraph 2). As the darkness blurs the trees together, the night comes “stealing out from them, too” (Paragraph 2). The katydids sing a “slumber song” (Paragraph 5). In contrast, books and men alike make the narrator suffer. People “chatter” (Paragraph 5). And the Bible teacher, representative of the “fools [who] cumber the Earth,” has “coarse manner and speech” (Paragraph 6).
This stark contrast serves to heighten the pull of gentleness, its allure. This draw is so powerful it casts a spell: “the necromancer’s spell” (Paragraph 6). The narrator’s “whole being was abandoned to the soothing and penetrating charm of the night” (Paragraph 4). The narrator craves this more substantial mode of interaction; “neither books nor men” can “talk to” the narrator in this manner (Paragraph 1). The allure of gentleness, as a theme, in part refers to how the narrator is drawn to the beauty and mystery of the natural world, which is far older and grander than man. On another level, however, this theme also refers to the narrator’s interest in connecting with a more significant power than that of man or his books—a power that is wise instead of foolish and that, instead of Bible thumping, emerges quietly and emanates from all things.
The Ugliness of Man’s Hubris
As the piece opens, the narrator is losing interest in human beings, specifically, “in the significance of their lives and their actions” (Paragraph 1). Her thoughts are drawn much more powerfully to the “Summer night” and to nature more broadly, that is, to subjects of true significance (Paragraph 1). Through juxtaposing man, including his books, with the grand mystery that is nature, Chopin emphasizes the ugliness of man’s hubris. Man’s pride is not justified. Accordingly, throughout the piece, man causes the narrator suffering, eliciting disdain and frustration.
Man’s efforts to communicate are rooted in ego. Man wants the narrator’s focus on him, and the narrator finds this pressure deeply distasteful and even harmful, indicating foolishness. Despite creating whole books, with one man even allegedly worth ten books, man cannot “talk to” the narrator as nature can; man lacks the grace to do so, unable to approach the narrator with any patience. In the final paragraph, “a man’s voice” is the ugly interruption that breaks the enchanting spell of the night. The Bible teacher, a “detestable” man with “coarse manner and speech,” apparently claims to know of Christ and to do so loudly (Paragraph 6). In contrast to the squawking “chatter” of man, the night creeps into place (Paragraph 5). The night places no demand on the narrator’s attention, arriving softly while “thinking I did not notice” (Paragraph 2). This gentle approach allows for a deeper communion that offers far more connection and meaning.
Man’s confidence in his own importance and knowledge is also misplaced. In particular, the piece emphasizes how man has forgotten his ephemeral nature. As the narrator slips under the spell, the humans around her are reduced to ghost-like beings: “human shapes flitted by like intangible things” (Paragraph 4). This imagery reflects the true nature of man. Man is mortal and should therefore stay humble and curious; the narrator is unbothered, for example, by the humans who, in a quiet manner not unlike the night, “stole up like little mice to peep” at her (Paragraph 4). It is the Bible teacher who rattles the narrator—a man who fails to grasp his own fragility. This “young fool who was born yesterday and will die tomorrow” has no experience worth shouting about in the face of the grand mystery that is nature, or life more generally (Paragraph 6).
The Divinity of Nature
The depictions of nature in “The Night Came Slowly” portray nature not only as beautiful and soothing but also, arguably, as something divine. There are many associations in this short piece between night and death (see Symbols/Motifs below). In turn, Chopin seems to associate nature with, if not the Christian God, necessarily, then at least with a higher awareness or plane of existence that transcends the present one.
The narrator places trust in nature to communicate more profound truths than man ever could. The stars, after all, have seen Christ. The narrator also trusts nature to communicate in a manner that does not cause them to suffer, as do men’s and book’s efforts to communicate. The narrator’s trust seems well founded. Just as the stars saw Christ, the stars see the narrator, suggesting an omniscience that has no energy for favoritism. The phrasing in this moment, as the narrator lies beneath the tree, is somewhat poignant too: “the only light was in the sky, filtering through the maple leaves and a star looking down through every cranny” (Paragraph 2). The stars seem to be framed not as their own bodies, but as holes through which the light in the sky filters, watching what is below.
There is also the curious inversion of life and death. That the spell is specifically referred to as a “necromancer’s spell” (Paragraph 6) somewhat suggests that the narrator is metaphorically dead, and nature is granting the narrator—however briefly—a pathway for communication with true life. The narrator cannot stay under the spell of night, however; their near slip into sleep is interrupted by the voice of a man. This moment suggests that the narrator, for better or worse, is still mortal. That is, the narrator still has to live out their human life before they can fully indulge in the mystery of the night, joining nature for good.
Notably, Chopin wrote “The Night Came Slowly” at the end of the 19th century, not long after the industrial revolution (about 1760–1840), during which humans had steadily sacrificed natural space and resources to feed industrial developments. As she wrote this piece, mass awareness of pollution and environmental issues was growing. Urbanization was on the rise, with more and more people moving into already packed cities. This context may have influenced the role that nature plays in this piece.
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