I had a hard time deciding what word to write about in my blog this week. I finally decided to do a search on the terms “black”, which appeared 88 times; “white”, which appeared 85 times; and then, finally, “gray”, which only appeared 24 times. I found this interesting because so much of the book is dedicated to shedding light on the indefinable areas of life that cannot be categorized, such as whether the comet was a good thing to happen to earth, or a terrible thing. After searching the word “gray” and looking at what terms came up, I decided I finally had my blog topic.
The main thing I noticed was that “gray” almost always was an adjective used to describe light. It even applies twice in one sentence on page 380, saying, “For as far as they both could see in the gray twilight there was nothing but a silver-gray expanse of rain-splattered water”. Furthermore on page 434, the sentence reads, “the view went from gray-white gradually to gray-dark”. There are occasional references to gray being the color of Sen. Jellison’s hair (p. 513) or the color of Harry’s worn uniform (p. 507), but for the majority of results, the word “gray” was in reference to the color of the sky or the color of the light that the sky produced.
I can’t help but think that this is intentional. While in class we studied the opposing categories that this book deals with at the surface (male vs. female, science vs. entertainment, US Democracy versus Soviet Communism), there surely is so much about the disaster of the comet strike that cannot be lumped into a nice, neat category such as “Good” or “Evil”. For instance, we cannot honestly say whether this will make life better or worse for future civilizations. We really aren’t able to comment on whether this makes life better for Maureen, or whether Eileen is happier now that she has lost her independence. There is chaos and confusion that comes with the strike of the comet, and I think that the color “gray” is frequently referenced, particularly in natural images, to underscore the fact that we can’t always categorize life as neatly as we would like to.