"The right shading for the god, the right shading for the gnon:e." Light imagery becomes for Willa Cather an effective device for revealing and enhancing the personalities, qualities, and moods of her characters. Light imagery operates in seemingly limitless ways to make her characters come to life within the novels. It is as if, like a painter, she realized the absolute necessity of light for creating the emotional dimension in her characters, for, as Ralph Evans (1984) observes, "if a picture is painted purely in its local colours without regard to light and shade and the characteristic qualities of shadow, it will tend to lie flat on the canvas without life and form» (Evans: 311). Some of Willa Cather's characters reveal only a keen sensitivity to light, but many are so frequently associated with light imagery that they seem to flare off the page with life. Willa Cather believed that characterization is what the novelist should . be most concerned with. The subject ·of art should be humanity, and it should express the artist's wonder of man. "His business is to make men and women and breathe into then1 until they become living souls , . ,'' (1he Kingdom qf Art: 48). Light becomes, so to speak, a technique \.Vhich \1/illa Cather used to capture the feelings of her characters and make them come alive for the re der 1
George Rishmawi