Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Something Wicked This Way Comes, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Good vs. Evil
Age, Time, and Acceptance
Love and Happiness
Fear, the Supernatural, and the Unknown
Summary
Analysis
As Charles watches Will and Jim run down the street, he fights the “sudden urge to run with them, make the pack.” Charles thinks about the “secret places” the boys run to, places that won’t be such a secret later in life, and somewhere deep inside him “a shadow turns mournfully over.” The boys are so different from each other, he thinks. Will runs for the sake of exercise, but Jim runs to see what’s ahead.
Charles’s feels the “sudden urge” to run with the boys because he longs to be young and resents his old age. The shadow that “turns mournfully” in his soul suggests that his youth has in fact died and he is left to grieve the loss.
Themes
“That’s Jim,” Charles thinks, “all bramblehair and itchweed.” But Will, he thinks, Will is the “the last peach, high on a summer tree.” Boys like Will are good— “they feel good, they look good, they are good.” Boys like Will still get into trouble occasionally, but each time they are hurt in life they “always wonder why, why does it happen?” Jim, on the other hand, expects to be hurt. Jim doesn’t question why; “he knows. He always knew.” While Will is “putting a bandage on his latest scratch, Jim’s ducking, weaving, bouncing away from the [next] knockout blow.”
Charles’s thoughts again underscore Will and Jim’s differences. Will is portrayed as innately good, and Charles’s description of him as a “peach” implies that Will is a sweet and innocent boy. Jim, however, is not a “peach.,” and his life experiences make him seem much older than his thirteen years. Jim’s expectation of life’s troubles and dangers suggests that he is not as innocent and naturally “good” as Will.
Themes
Charles locks up the library and thinks that Will and Jim are “strangers.” “Go on,” he thinks. “I’ll catch up, some day…” He walks down to the bar on the corner for his “nightly one-and-only drink” and listens to the other patrons talk about the invention of alcohol. “Fire Water, the Elixir Vitae,” they call it. A “Cure-all” given to them by God. It “works miracles,” the bartender says, as he offers Charles a drink. “I don’t need it,” Charles says. “But someone inside me does.” When the bartender asks who, Charles doesn’t answer. “The boy I once was,” he thinks to himself.
Charles’s comment that he will “catch up, some day” foretells the end of the novel when he runs happily alongside Will and Jim. His daily nightcap is evidence of his deep unhappiness and implies that he must first dull his pain with alcohol before going home to his much younger family. Still, it isn’t Charles who needs the drink—it is his inner child who is at odds with his current life.
Themes
