Night Imagery
Unsurprisingly, this book is filled to the brim with night imagery, as Dewdney's goal is to convince the reader that the night is an interesting entity all on its own. He uses tons of imagery to get this point across, much of it borrowed from other poets, especially the Romantics (Thoreau and Longfellow in particular). Imagery used includes darkness, nocturnal animals, and the accentuated brightness of the heavens, among many other elements.
Personification Imagery
Night is often personified, and the result is always feminine. For example, both Longfellow and Shelley wrote poems about how Night is like a woman, and Williamson wrote one about how a woman is like Night. Throughout mythological tradition, Night is also categorized as a woman, especially evident in the Greek goddess Nyx, the personification of Night herself.
Planetary Imagery
Dewdney uses the imagery of the planets and the moon in many circumstances in an attempt to evoke a sense of heavenly wonder toward the night. Much of the science in multiple sections revolves around astronomy, from Copernicus and Kepler to Hubble and Olbers' Paradox. In the first chapter, additionally, Dewdney tries to excite the reader's imagination with the following sentence, which is just one example of the trend: “There are deep nights when the planets gather in the sky like moons and the twilight is as blue as a Thai sapphire" (6).
Sunset Imagery
There are entire subsections of this book devoted to sunsets, and their importance as symbols goes beyond mere imagery. They are described in stunning detail, but they represent something more than themselves: the transition of day to night, the cosmic dance that results in the cycle of light and dark that governs the behavior of men. Sunsets show up in multiple chapters as well as the conclusion, where they serve as a concluding device in contrast with the sunrise.
