Gene Wolfe, in 'The Book of the New Sun' gives a wise nun opportunity to analyse a story. A good man had turned bad, after some changes in his life. The nun explains that the plant of a man's life does not grow up into the light unless it also puts its roots down into the dirty darkness of the earth. It is redolent of the parable of the sower.
This is reminiscent of Giant Despair from The Pilgrims Regress, who showed people their insides as things of horror. Pilgrim realises finally that it is because things from inside should not be visible - if they are visible, something horrible has happened, and rightly, they are tainted with that horror. But in modest darkness one's bowels do their dirty but wholesome work and we live on.
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