What are the motifs in 'Night, Mother by Marsha Norman?

Free will is a recurring idea in the story. Jessie's choice to kill herself is her attempt to take control of her life. In a small way she took control when she chose smoking instead of her husband, but that provided a bitter and hollow victory, since she still loved Cecil. Her epilepsy and her mother's efforts to shelter her from any knowledge of her disease in some way deprived Jessie of the free will to make decisions about her disease and, more broadly, her life. Free will means assuming responsibility for an individual's actions and an acceptance of the consequences; Jessie's choice of suicide is her effort to assert control and act upon the free will that she feels has been absent from her life.