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
Will and Jim spend the day in hiding. They hide in barns and garages, and they even stop by the police station and loiter for a while in a church steeple. When they arrive at the library, they find Charles in the back room, staring at the clock made of books. “From the beginning,” Charles says to the boys. “Please.” Will and Jim tell him everything from the carnival to Miss Foley. “I believe,” Charles says.
Charles easily believes the boys’ stories, offering more proof of his own inner child and his desire to be young again. Most adults would likely dismiss the boys’ story as a product of their childish imaginations, but Charles instantly believes and tries to help.
Themes
Charles then shows Will and Jim a series of old newspaper advertisements for Cooger and Dark’s carnival. The first is dated October 12, 1888, and he has found two more dated 1860 and 1846. The most recent advertisement is in a newspaper dated October 1910, “and October now, tonight,” Charles says. “…Beware the autumn people…”
While the exact year that the novel takes place is not given, according to the newspaper clippings, Cooger and Dark have been collecting souls and riding the carousel for over a century.
Themes
“What?” Will and Jim ask, puzzled. Charles tells the boys about an old religious story he heard as a child in which evil people associated with the fall “sift the human storm for souls.” According to Charles, these evil people “eat flesh of reason” and “fill tombs with sinners.” If Mr. Dark and his freaks are autumn people, Will asks, “does that make us…summer people?” No, says Charles, “there are times when we’re all autumn people.”
