"A child is a hollow vessel with a thundering echo" (135).

This is how Carl Friedman describes her and her siblings' situation in the “Afterword.” Throughout the process of reading Nightfather, I've been trying to put my finger on exactly what role the children play in the story. Yes, they are an audience for the father, but they are too young and too innocent to effectively grapple with the concept of the Holocaust. Support? Not quite. Though they definitely are a positive light in the father's life, they can never fully comprehend what he went through. No, Carl Friedman is the one who finds the perfect description for herself and her siblings: hollow vessels. Her and her siblings' role in the novel is to absorb her father's stories, not as a responsive audience or as a support system, but as children who take what is said to them and regurgitate it back into their own lives. The father "fills up" his "empty" children with his memories and his experiences, thus making them their memories and their experiences. Numerous instances show how the children apply what happened to their father to situations that they personally experience. Whether it is burying toys or saving toothpaste, the children spin the father's story into their own. As Carl Friedman poses the question, “Where did the tales stop and reality begin?” (135) For the father, the stories are means of expelling his bitter feelings and scathing memories into the world. For the children, though, the stories act as fuel for their own lives, propelling their actions and emotions in directions basically predestined by their father's past.