Pain In Bret Lott's Short Story 'Night'

There is no comparison to the amount of pain a parent endures when they outlive their child. A tale of woe is what resides after such incident. An endless cycle of grief is exemplified in the short story “Night” by Bret Lott. The way the father in the story pays meticulous attention to detail makes the audience believe that he does not want to forget the existence of his child. He is merely in denial. The denial is being caused by auditory hallucinations, and Lott describes those incidents with descriptive words that correlate to the father’s emotions. The auditory hallucinations the father experiences make him seem hopeful, yet blind to the fact of his child’s death. The narrator states, “He thought he could hear their child’s breathing in the next room, the near-silent, smooth sound of air in and out”, the artificial breathing the father hears

“His fingertips led him along the hall and to the next room” conveys that the father is no longer able to control himself. Lott states that the father’s fingertips are leading him through a hallway towards what we could say is his child’s room, the word “led” corroborates that the father is no longer leading himself. When someone is being led, there is some sort of hope in which you believe you are being led in the right direction. We can safely say that the father’s denial is blinding him, and we can relate this blindness to the leadership of the fingertips. From time to time, a person who is blind needs to be led in some way. What is unfortunate about the father is that he allows himself to be blinded by his denial; he knows the truth. At this point, the narrator implies that the father confirmed that the child is not there, “He turned off the lights and listened. He heard nothing…” He is now back to reality, with “his fingertips helpless” the father no longer has hope, there is no more leadership role for his fingertips. He, himself is