“I like the darkness, there is something to the feeling of not seeing the colour of things as they appear, but as they truly are. There’s something about the unknown, the quiet the cold. There is something unspoken about the dark, something I can never quite put words to, something terrifying yet stunning. I have found so much comfort in the dark, and twice as many horrors in the light,” said poet Victoria Archer. Salman Rushdie explores the idea of darkness holding beauty in his book Haroun and the Sea of Stories. In the book a young boy named Haroun goes on an adventure from his home in a sad city, to the moon called Kahani. Haroun goes to have his father’s story tap reconnected after it had been disconnected by a Water Genie named Iff. Haroun …show more content…
goes off to Iff’s home called Gup. But then Haroun ends up going to save the Sea of Stories from being destroyed by the evil Khattam-Shud, who is the ruler of the land of Chup. The land of Chup is on Kahani along with the land of Gup. Haroun meets many companions along the way who teach him about the mysterious world of Kahani, and help him to defeat the shadowy Khattam-Shud. In the end Haroun moves the moon to defeat Khattam-Shud and his shadow army. Haroun is granted one wish and wishes for a happy ending for his sad city. Although Haroun uses light to overpower the dark, darkness is beautiful. Within darkness beauty can be found, beauty in darkness can be found through other objects, but also in darkness itself.
Without darkness there would be many beautiful objects that a person could not see. The only time a person can see the stars in all of their beauty is when it is dark outside. This beauty is what Princess Batcheat is attempting to see when she gets kidnapped by the army of Chup. Iff the Water Genie explains why Princess Batcheat would go into the Twilight Strip. “Sirs’ Maybe you don’t know it but the young people of Gup do go into the Twilight Strip just occasionally, that is to say sometimes, that is to say most frequently. Living in the sunlight all the time, they wish to see the stars, the earth, the other moon shining in the sky. Darkness my sirs has its fascinations: mystery, strangeness, romance” (Rushdie 103). The young citizens of Gup know that there is beauty in the darkness, if it was ugly and not worth seeing they would not go into the Twilight Strip. Salman Rushdie shows the attractiveness of darkness by having the young people of Gup go into it. Darkness holds mysteries and romance. Light through darkness is not the only beauty that darkness holds. Darkness itself can cause objects to be beautiful. Haroun discoveres this information when he meets a Shadow Warrior named Mudra who is fighting his shadow in the forest of Chup. “The warrior was a striking figure. His long, sleek hair hung to his waist in a thick ponytail. His face was painted
green, with scarlet lips, exaggerated black brows and eyes, and white stripes on his cheeks. No matter what tricks his shadow played, the warrior was its equal. And as they fought each other, standing toe to toe, Haroun began to think of their combat as a dance of great beauty and grace” (Rushdie 124). This beautiful warrior is designed live and fight in the darkness, and the design is beautiful. The Shadow Warrior has developed a beautiful way of fighting by living in the darkness. The warrior would not contain his beauty if he did not live in darkness. The warrior is a mysterious figure in Haroun’s eyes. The dark holds mysteries, and mystery is one of the attributes that makes darkness beautiful. Haroun learns this concept when he is entering the Old Zone. “They traveled on towards the Pole; and when Haroun saw a forest standing up from the ocean, its tall growths waving in a light breeze, the absence of light added to the mystification” (Rushdie 140). A floating forest holds beautiful mysteries that can only be shown in the darkness. Without the dark a person would be able to see everything in their surroundings. Light would erase the mystery and steal the beauty that can only be seen in the dark. Darkness and beauty go hand in hand. Darkness hold beauty. Darkness allows a person to see beauty that they cannot find in everyday life. Rushdie shows his son and the world that even when the darkness is scary, they can still find beauty. Without darkness we would not have been able to see the stars or the moon. Without being able to see the stars and the moon some of the most beautiful and famous paintings would not have been possible. Van Gogh would never have been able to create Starry Night without the darkness.
I think the main idea the narrators is trying to emphasize is the theme of opposition between the chaotic world and the human need for community with a series of opposing images, especially darkness and light. The narrator repeatedly associates light with the desire to clear or give form to the needs and passions, which arise out of inner darkness. He also opposes light as an idea of order to darkness in the world, the chaos that adults endure, but of which they normally cannot speak to children.
This fact can be supported by the book’s very title, Night. Even before reading, night implies darkness, hatred and doom, as well as other negative ideas associated with the pitch-blackness that can be seen only at night. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.
Darkness is one of the main themes in this scene. She said, and brought in cloudy night. immediately. I will be able to do so. Spread thy curtains, love performing night', this.
In response to our world’s growing reliance on artificial light, writer Paul Bogard argues that natural darkness should be preserved in his article “Let There be dark”. He effectively builds his argument by using a personal anecdote, allusions to art and history, and rhetorical questions.
In the book, Children of the Lamp The Akhenaten Adventure, by P. B. Kerr there is a character named John, one of the protagonists in the story. John is immature because he always wants to use his powers for fun, he is always joking around, and above all, he enjoys playing jokes on his twin sister. John, as I mentioned before, has a twin. This twin is named Philippa, and they share a very special connection. But that does not stop John from making jokes and pranking her whenever he can. Also, John likes to just overall mess around in any important adventure, including when they get trapped. John is a major part of the plot, and he helps Philippa and Nimrod face the antagonist, the Ifrit tribe.
Alfonso Arau has bathed his film in a mixture of a visual glow and a darkness not only to show us the differences in setting and characters, but to show us passions and repressions. Strong passions produce sparks and fire, despair is bathed in darkness. Arau also uses lighting to just enhance the beauty of the film. The night scenes are candlelit and have a certain glow. The day scenes are inside the houses have natural light pouring in through windows and cracks giving the film a beautiful look almost as if we were looking through the windows of the character’s souls.
Since symbolism first began to be used in the English language, Light has always represented a theme of hope and optimism. The phrase “Light at the end of the tunnel” best encompasses this, implying an opportunity or relief after difficulty or chaos. In the same way, Darkness has represented confusion or despair. James Joyce expands on the traditional connotations of Light and Darkness in his short story “Araby”. The narrative follows a young boy on his futile quest to find love with a girl much older than himself whom he hardly knows. Joyce uses Light to represent not only hope, but unrealistic idealism and illusion. In the same way, Darkness, in addition to despair, represents the reality and truth in the narrator's predicament. Joyce uses Light and Darkness as a symbol for the clash between fantasy and reality that takes place within the narrator.
These lines may seem confusing if not read properly. At first look, these might not make sense because the night is acquainted with darkness, but when the lines are read together as intended, one can see that the night is “cloudless” and filled with “starry skies” (1, 1-2). The remaining lines of the first stanza tell the reader that the woman's face and eyes combine all the greatness of dark and light:
Testimony on Behalf of the Dark, a collection of essays by twenty-eight wonderful writers on the value of darkness and the costs of light pollution. Bogard’s writing has appeared in print and in articles in the Los Angeles Times, Outside, National Geographic, Conservation and others. Over the years he lived and taught in New Mexico, Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Currently, Bogard works as an assistant professor of English and teaches creative writing and environmental literature at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. This article recounts Bogard’s childhood experience with the nature of darkness as he offers a persuasive argument on the importance of darkness on our planet earth, in which natural darkness should be preserved.
To many people stories are just a way to pass time, to escape from reality, that they do not serve any real purpose. However in Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie If there are no stories then many of the characters lives would be changed drastically
Lightness and darkness have very different meanings in the human psyche in that lightness is synonymous with innocence and naïvety while darkness coincides with all things daunting and evil. Throughout the memoir, many situations are repeated but to different degrees of severity. For example, on pages 113 and 145, Marjane is arguing with her mother. However, the first instance is simply a minor act of preteen rebellion while the second alludes to the possibility of state-sanctioned rape and execution. At first glance, these pages are very similar; Marjane’s mother is obviously angry and invades upon her daughter’s personal space as she lectures and ...
Hunt, Jonathan. "In Darkness." The Horn Book Magazine Mar.-Apr. 2012: 111+. Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Apr. 2014
Throughout its entirety, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness utilizes many contrasts and paradoxes in an attempt to teach readers about the complexities of both human nature and the world. Some are more easily distinguishable, such as the comparison between civilized and uncivilized people, and some are more difficult to identify, like the usage of vagueness and clarity to contrast each other. One of the most prominent inversions contradicts the typical views of light and dark. While typically light is imagined to expose the truth and darkness to conceal it, Conrad creates a paradox in which darkness displays the truth and light blinds us from it.
In his article, “Let There Be Dark”, Paul Bogard reacts to the evolution of darkness, from a planet filled with dark to a nonstop world of light. Through Bogard’s appeal to emotions, logical evidence, and convincing reasoning, he effectively captures and persuades the audience to accept the darkness.
The "Heart of Darkness," written by Joseph Conrad in 1899 as a short story, is about two men who face their own identities as what they consider to be civilized Europeans and the struggle to not to abandon their themselves and their morality once they venture into the "darkness." The use of "darkness" is in the book's title and in throughout the story and takes on a number of meanings that are not easily understood until the story progresses. As you read the story you realize that the meaning of "darkness" is not something that is constant but changes depending on the context it used.