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 stops running as the courthouse clock “bangs” nine o’clock. All the shops in town are busy closing, and Mr. Tetley, the proprietor of the United Cigar Store, is pushing an old wooden Indian. “Hey!” yells Will and Jim. “Scare you, boys?” Mr. Tetley asks. “Naw!” they reply but Will “shivers.” He can feel “cold tidal waves of strange rain” moving their way, and he wants to get home and layer himself “under sixteen blankets and a pillow” before the storm comes.
Charles later claims that each tick of the clock represents an opportunity to reject evil and embrace good, and when the courthouse clock “bangs” nine o’clock, it loudly represents another such opportunity. Will’s “shivers” are more evidence of the strange fear that has settled over the town, which makes him want to rush toward the safety of home.
Themes
Mr. Tetley hears something far off in the distance, and he is so distracted by the noise that he doesn’t notice Will and Jim run off down the street. Next, the boys come across Mr. Crosetti, Green Town’s barber, and he has a single tear running down his cheek. “Don’t you smell it?” he asks the boys. There is a faint smell of cotton candy in the air, and Mr. Crosetti cries because he remembers eating cotton candy as a boy. “Why haven’t I stopped to think and smell in the last thirty years?” he wonders. “You’re busy, Mr. Crosetti,” Will answers. “You haven’t got time.” The boys take off down the street. “Good night!” they yell back to Mr. Crosetti.
Mr. Tetley’s distracted behavior suggests that he is also affected by a strange and subtle fear, and Mr. Crosetti’s single tear indicates that he is nostalgic for his own childhood. This makes his disappearance later in the text even more suspicious—since he obviously longs for youth, it is assumed that he too takes a ride on the carousel. Will’s comment that Mr. Crosetti doesn’t have “time” to think about the past is in keeping with Bradbury’s overarching association between age and time, but it also implies that adults can’t be bothered with thoughts of youth. The strange and unexpected smell of cotton candy is evidence of the carnival’s supernatural power—they won’t arrive for another six hours, yet the smell of cotton candy precedes them.
Themes
