In the "Night Waitress" by Lynda Hull, the narrator has many concerns about her life that she expresses simply by describing her night at work and the people she encounters while there. She very clearly explores feelings about her appearance, her desires, and her loneliness among many other emotions. Often, poetry deals with supernatural beings or is focused around situations very different from that of real life. That is why in this poem, I think Lynda Hull seems to want to tell the reader that the narrator is an ordinary female in contemporary society with ordinary concerns. Through the narrator, I believe above all, Hull is trying to give the reader a character they can relate to and sympathize with, rather than just someone he or she can admire or pity.
The narrator's struggle with insecurities about her appearance is a very important element of the poem. Within the third line, the night waitress already expresses concerns about the way she looks. She writes that she tells herself that her face has "character, not beauty." It is obvious from this line that her appearance has always been something that has troubled her, so much to the point that she has to reassure herself of the endearing nature of her "mother's Slavic face." Since image is something of great importance in contemporary society and obviously of the setting in this poem, the narrator is struggling not only within herself to find her beauty, but also to find a way to show it to others.
Another concern of the night waitress" is desires she has not yet met. She, like every other heterosexual woman in the world, craves loves and acceptance from the opposite sex. She writes as if she feels she is part of the background scenery when she says, "they do not see me. I bring the cups." This line shows that she feels a bit taken for granted while working inside the restaurant, as if no one notices her despite the fact the she is the one serving all of the customers.
