Interpretation
Night hawks Upon further observation, you can see that there is no way in or no way out of the diner, so the customers are stuck in the diner like birds in a cage. This concept is embellished further by the excessively bright shades used in the diner. There colors are highly contrasting to the dark gloomy world of red and green complimentary colors outside of their imprisoned environment. This color scheme suggests that the people are metaphorically trapped. They are trapped by their own personal gloom, and there is no obvious way out. The man behind the counter looks as if he is trapped inside the diner as well but in fact he is free because he has a door behind him. This is kind of ironic because he is the only one who is not really allowed to leave. This is his job to serve the people, and he is entrapped within this venture until his shift has terminated. The three people around the diner are not greatly expressed in detail. The two men are so similar to each other, looking like clones in the painting. I believe the painter is trying to symbolize that people who stay around one another for long periods of time that they start to become like one another in other cases you can say clones. Because of the glass store front, the outside of the world can look inside like visitors at a zoo. At zoos you have big glass windows as well, and typically you look in to watch the animals. The people in the painting act just like the animals at the zoo lonely and all. When you think of “Night hawks” you most likely think of predators. You can see that the men might be predators and the woman the prey. The diners big glass window and a zoo can be tied together, because when you’re at a zoo you are observing them as if they are predators and also we assume that the men in the diner are also predators because of how they are stuck in the big glass window like a cage. But you can see that the woman and one of the men are sitting by each other, making the...