What point do you think Asimov was trying to make with this story? Provide proof.

The
sciencenovella "" bytakes place on a planet that experiences continual daylight
because it is immersed in a system with multiple stars. A journalist visits an observatory to
interview scientists, who warn that every 2,000 years, the world is plunged into darkness by a
total eclipse. This time period coincides with evidence of the collapse of civilization, which
has happened again and again on this planet. Because they are always in constant daylight, the
planet's inhabitants have an extreme fear of the dark. The scientists speculate that when total
darkness comes, people go insane, and they burn cities due to an irrational desire for light. At
the end of the story, the eclipse happens: the world is plunged into darkness, and the planet's
inhabitants discover that they are in the midst of a star cluster with tens of thousands of
remote suns visible in the night sky. Everyone goes insane, and the cities begin to
burn.

In his autobiography I, Asimov, Isaac Asimov
devotes a chapter to the story "Nightfall"specifically how it came to be written and
how it became one of the most popular pieces of short science fiction ever published. He writes
that John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, brought
Asimov into his office and read him this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would
men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of
God.

According to Asimov, Campbell went on to
say,

I think Emerson is wrong. I think that if the stars
would appear one night in a thousand years, people would go crazy. I want you to write a story
about that and call it "Nightfall."

Asimov
dutifully wrote the story for Campbell, who paid him top rates plus a bonus because he was so
pleased with the result.

In writing this story, then, Asimov was consciously
attempting to make the point that Campbell suggested: if people in constant sunlight only saw
darkness every few thousand years, they would go mad. Most of the story is buildup, but this
point is brought out strongly in the last few paragraphs of the story when the eclipse actually
happensthe men in the observatory go mad, and the cities start to burn.