Morning Star is set in a future in which human beings have changed form. The color and sigil of people designates their appearance, status, and societal role. The divisions based on color act as a visual mark of the systematic oppression enacted by Gold, and they show how unnatural these divisions are. The Gold support their rule by promoting these divisions and focusing hatred on colors other than themselves. The tactic succeeds with the Gray legionnaires at the beginning of the novel who are described as possessing “a marrow-deep racism” (22) against the lowColors.

Through the motif of colors and sigils, Brown warns about the ability of oppressive regimes to thrive when they can exploit the divisions of others. Notably, the Jackal (the novel’s main antagonist) seeks to deepen these divisions by defining colors into separate species, while Darrow (the protagonist) has his sigils removed, thereby rejecting this paradigm. Darrow continues to reject false divisions, which Brown stresses in his pre-battle speech at Ilium in which Darrow denies that people are any color but they are instead “humanity” (348).