The Night Waitress by Lynda Hull

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 Sl

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. She writes about a man leaning over a jukebox who she would not stop if he tried to touch her. This line shows that she longs for at least a physical relationship, if not an emotional one as well.

The narrator is desperate for someone in her life to alleviate her loneliness, but seems to contradict herself by the time morning comes. She writes that by the time the “sun unlids the end of the avenue,” she is just too tired to even look at the men around her, let alone attempt a relationship with any of them. Perhaps the fact that she ignores the men the next morning is a criticism of a woman’s role in society. Though she badly craves a relationship, she is not willing to go out and pursue it during the day when it is expected of the man to make the first move. Though at nights she wants to try all of the bars down the street, she never once says anything to the man at the jukebox or to any man for that matter. Maybe Lynda Hull is trying to addr