Light vs. Darkness Week 2

Light and darkness are used by the author to portray many things. In Chapter 5, light is used as a symbol of knowledge and hope and darkness is used as a symbol of “sorrow, of ignorance and degradation…” (118). The color imagery is also used to denote the differences in race as light represents the slave who went to the “war-scarred land” (119), “shedding light upon it where’er he passed through” (119) and the blackness portrays the “aching land” (118) which was filled with “strife and darkness” (118). This image of illumination by the slave is representing the race as more knowledgeable and superior to the white race. Light is used to depict “good” and the darkness is used to represent “bad” in this case. The darkness represents the white society in which there are “clouds of darkness” (119) and the black people represent the light that brought the land back to life. They allowed the land to be “reborn” (119).