preview

Edward Hopper Nighthawks Essay

Decent Essays
Open Document

According to one of Jo Hopper’s journals of her husband’s works, the Nighthawks painting, which was originally going to be titled “Night Hawks” was completed on January 21, 1942. This painting is most notably one of Hopper’s most famous works.. Hopper is most known as a painter who had a way of portraying emotional themes of loneliness, regret, solitude, mystery, and boredom. By analyzing Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, I will also argue that the emotional theme and setting of the painting is influenced by the events of World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor. The sense of emotion evoked by Hopper’s painting is a feeling of loneliness and isolation. Even though we see several people in the painting, the fact that there is no one else in the …show more content…

One of those important objects is coffee; there are three coffee mugs for the three people. The coffee allows the customers to be grounded within the scene and gives them a place to go when there is nowhere else to go. Gordon Theisen powerfully states, “Without their coffee, the customers would have no excuse to linger. They would have to leave the diner, to go… where?” By this we could say getting a cup of coffee brought people a sense of belonging and peace. People needed this sense of belonging and peace during this time of war because isolation and despair were the dominant feelings. Another significant object is the advertisement for Phillies cigars that is placed on top of the café. Usually when we think of a cigar we think of it as being an expensive luxury brand rather than a cheap one. Now with new technology they could make cigars by machines, this “transformed them from a luxury item into a product that the masses could afford…” Since the advertisement for Phillies said, “Only 5 ¢” and “America’s No. 1 Cigar”, this shows the desire and need for something affordable that still had a feeling of power or luxury. This new development in technology is something that was a product of the war, showing that technology is not all bad especially if it helps the economy during a rough

Get Access