Night Coloured Pearl
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Heiney introduces his book by explaining that literature is an organic development, (meaning that "its present is always connected to its past.") He explains how each literary generation derives from the preceding one by giving an example of how human generations succeed each other. Because literature is based on previous literature, Heiney suggests that it falls into a cycle of repetition and patterns, which evolves into something new. In his introduction, he summarizes his own ideas in saying that nobody has the ability to write new literature, but humans are only able to write what they know from previous writings and past experiences. Heiney's argument is evident in The Night-Coloured Pearl, in which the people's beliefs and traditions are based on what they have inherited from their ancestors that are then adapted to suit today's attitudes and philosophy.
The past can be identified in The Night-Coloured Pearl because it shows what the villagers' ancestors used to do. All of the people's practices are basically what their ancestors used to perform in the past. These people strongly believe in their traditions that were passed along to them and do not wish to change them but to enhance them for their own purposes. Their ancestors "developed a concept, which they called the Way" (22). All the people living in the island still practice this concept...