Themes
Elsewhere in his writings, MacDonald used the more orthodox symbols of light representing goodness and darkness standing for ignorance and evil. In The Day Boy and the Night Girl such a distinction is not clearly set forward, although night and day are vividly polarized. MacDonald may seem to be leaning towards Manichaeism by allowing as much credit to the night as he does in The Day Boy and the Night Girl, but he avoids this by linking evil not with darkness, but rather with self-love. In this way, evil is not portrayed as a force striving against good (which suggests a power equal but opposite to good) but is seen rather as a gaze misdirected inwards towards the self. Photogen and Nycteris are both less than whole beings until they learn to care for each other in spite of their differences and opposing weaknesses.
The three main characters each seek progress, but through different channels. Watho attempts to gather and subjugate, Photogen tries to conquer through ability, and Nycteris uses her imagination to further her understanding and knowledge of the world to better see how she fits in it. The Day Boy and the Night Girl is essentially a tale which depicts MacDonald’s belief in the imagination’s ability to take the focus off of self, thereby opening the imaginer to a world of companionships which can lead to true wholeness.
Read more about this topic: The Day Boy And The Night Girl
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)