Caravan to Darkness

I tend to favor a bit of dark, and I don't necessarily mean meat, chocolate, beer, Sith or Goth. I am meaning  the streaks of darkness that add depth to many, many parts of our lives.

E.g. Eyeliner - why is eye-liner used? I am uncertain. I never had sisters, my wife doesn't use much makeup (and she doesn't need to -ha!), and my boys haven't started experimenting with it yet... My best guess is that the darkness in eyeliner brings out the color of the eyes...

Think of a tree at spring - there are streaks of dark that balance out or enhance the bright spring leaves that will eventually engulf the underlying branches - or how light and dark play together... just ask Bob:

But, where I am primarily heading with this is - stories - as in various writings, short stories, novels, whatever. Why might stories have darkness? Depth? Interesting-ness? Is it all about good vs. evil? I don't completely think so.

Exempli gratia - literature relating to children and young adults - C.S. Lewis, J.R.R Tolkien, Roald Dahl, Maurice Sendak, Daniel Handler, J.K. Rowling.

There is a bit of darkness present in each of their works. Do/did these folks have dark minds? Are/were they all menaces to society? No. A spectrum of dark matter has been unleashed by them and spread out through various degrees of creativeness. For whatever reasons, their writings rose above and left lasting marks.

Wow, for some reason I suddenly got a hankering for a good pipe.