“At the beginning of the cycle, darkness calls, approaching like until one comes who is empty: like a vessel that will gather the darkness itself, and allow the infection to grow and spread like cancer. The ship has arrived, the darkness is now gathering" (p. 84). The evil that gathers in Cheshunt comes in shades of colors: “fiery red” and “solid blue.” But each of these evils is defeated by “white love”. The mental battle of evil and how evil can be abusive, aggressive and violent (fire-red) and the deception and dishonesty of authority (uniform - blue) can be difficult to fight, but good (love-white) overcomes everything and wins against any color of evil even if every color makes it white and every shade of evil constitutes good. In the novel The Gathering the theme of good and evil and how they can be aggressive, offensive and violent is explored and developed. It is shown that even though people are evil in this story, there are different colors and forms of evil. One person's way of displaying evil may be completely different from another person's, and the extent of evil may vary. For example, Buddha and his bullies are not as evil as Seth's father and Mr. Karle. Seth's father and Mr. Karle lead all the other evil followers and show them how to be evil. Buddha and his bully followers only follow evil and treat people as they are shown to treat them. Buddha intimidates Nathanial on his first day because he is weak and doesn't fit in. Mr. Karle however calls Nathanial's mother and "lies" to her by telling her that he believes Nathanial is rude and disruptive in class and that he received detention for it. This. In the novel, not only evil is explored, but also good. People say that good is white and always rises above evil, but this is debatable. Although good always rises above evil in the end, just like the Chain, white is made up of all the colors of the spectrum and therefore good can contain evil and evil people could arise from being good. A good example of this is shown by Danny in The Gathering. Treat younger people just like the police treated him and spread his story so everyone younger than him knows what happened and what the police are capable of.