How does William Manchester use imagery in A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age?

The rough social image is one of a declining Western civilization after the barbaric destruction and decay of the Roman Empire. It would not be until the rise of a number of social movements, the rediscovery of antiquity and the creation of modern science. Then the Western World would emerge from the darkness and enter the light through social periods like the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.