The great glow that was “not the glow of a sun” is not explicitly explained to us, but we know that the city is once again on fire. In the second-to-last paragraph, there is a collection of words involving brightness and heat, in contrast with the nightfall. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is going mad as well. This stream of consciousness clearly dictates to the reader that Aton really is going mad from the cold dark. In the darkness, he screams, “We didn’t know anything! We though six stars in a universe s something the Stars didn’t notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and…”. The beliefs of this group turn out to be the closest to the truth, yet even Aton cannot handle the reality of his most closely held ideals. One of the characters, Aton, is a member of a cult who follow of belief surrounding the existence of Stars, who they believe to be omnipotent beings who only appear in darkness. As they experience this total shift in perception, and their view of the universe moves outward, so does the narrator’s knowledge, thus increasing the effect significantly. Thirty thousand mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in it’s awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world.” Having never seen stars, or forced to remain in the dark before, the characters suddenly realize how small and insignificant their planet, and therefore they, really are. The narrator, who up to this point showed knowledge comparable only to the characters themselves, describes the stars: “Not just earth’s feeble thirty-six hundred stars visible to the eye Lagash was in the center of a giant cluster. As the overwhelming power of the dark is demonstrated, separation of the situation and cause in the writing lets the reader empathize with a people whom we cannot imagine.Īt just the moment when the light disappears to be replaced by a “blood-curdling blackness”, the stars shine through. As the characters realize the immensity of their universe, the narrator mirrors this epiphany by suddenly becoming all knowing. In the final thirty lines of the story, Lagash, the planet in question, slips into darkness and the stars come out for the first time in millennia. For a people who never experience it, the dark can become gravely dangerous. Every 2049 years, at a time when only one sun is visible, it eclipses for twelve hours. There is no night, as the day is constant and unending. In Nightfall’s world, a planet with six suns, no one is ever in the dark. Nightfall, by Isaac Asimov, takes a simple premise, commonplace for us, and puts it in a foreign context.
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