Edward Hopper Nighthawks Essay

During the late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, America experienced many cultural and social changes. These changes are portrayed through an art form called American Realism, which attempts to depict the ordinary American life at home during different time periods. Edward Hopper, a well-known realist painter displays many commonplace scenes in his work, capturing the isolation of city life. In 1942, following the Pearl Harbor bombing, he painted his famous Nighthawks painting, which displays the common themes of loneliness and in this case, wartime isolation. It uses Kairos, pathos, along with contrasting dark and light colors and four mysterious individuals, to bring out the deeper messages in this piece.

From the first glance, the brightly lit diner pulls the viewers’ attention onto it, bringing familiarity to many of the viewers, as diners

In this image, Hopper evokes a sense of pathos to represent this fact with the woman sitting by the man. As she sits alone late at night longing for her husband who is away, the man sitting by her may be mistaking her for a single woman, and attempting to speak to her. This may play into the title of the piece as well. The word Nighthawks representing the man who comes out at night and seeks out other women like a hawk. The structure of his face also resembles that of a hawk, with his long-pointed nose. It could also represent the group of individuals as a whole, who appear to be the only ones left awake in the city, like a group of nighthawks. Another war representation is the man sitting alone. As women during World War II were taking up the jobs of the men who left to fight, which was endorsed by the Strong Woman advertisements, there were fewer women with free time. Therefore, the man sitting alone may have a wife who is too busy to be with him, so he spends his lonely nights out in a