Known as one of the most famous American paintings and Edward Hopper’s best-known work, The Nighthawks, an oil canvas from 1942, is the perfect portrayal of loneliness.

It depicts four people in a downtown diner in the middle of the night. The deserted urban streetscape is illuminated by the light coming from the immense glass window. To be more precise, this painting is the symbol of a real-life diner in Manhattan, on Greenwich Street. The artist admitted that he simplified the scene and made the diner bigger, so that he could get his message across more easily.

Hopper has been asked numerous times about the emptiness in the painting. Surprisingly enough, he responded that he didn’t find it particularly lonely. He subconsciously captured the isolation one can experience in a big city. In fact, the main theme of this work of art is the sense of loneliness rooted within those living in a large urban area, highlighted by the disconnection in a diner late at night.

It would be impossible to look at this painting with neutral eyes. Once you get a peek of the streetscape, you automatically put yourself in the shoes of those sitting at the tables in the diner. Or at least, that’s what I did. I imagined what brought them all there at the same time and what the reasons for their isolation were.

The absence of affection, the coldness of the chairs in the diner. Everything seems like the antonym of a family. Or the only escape from one that is bound to swallow you whole.

The in-between

I have no family
I exist in the in-between
Trapped amid a hurricane and a glacier’s frozen grasp

I stand at the crossroads
Caught between a tidal wave and a lung of ice
Between glances of disdain and pupils of stone

I have no family
I have chaos or nothing at all
I have a tightrope or the void

I wander through the tines of a fork stuck in the road
Holding the feather to sign my life sentence
The pillory or an eternity at the guillotine

I have no family
I have more than that
For I possess the rare gift of choice

Few tread upon a shattered bridge
Fewer get to knock on a castle of glass
But I embrace both paths

In the space between
I unearth more than emptiness
I become a demiurge

I have no home
Transcending to my realm
Decisions mold my fate

In my castle of clay
I have no family
I choose peace