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
Outside, Will marches, part of the parade. He doesn’t want to march, but his legs keep moving. He wants to scream but can’t. He looks for Jim and finds him, and then his eyes fall on the Dwarf. Looking at all the freaks, Will wonders who they are, or were, before Mr. Dark found them.
Will has seemingly been taken captive by the carnival, but even in his terror and despair he thinks of others and sympathizes with him.
Themes
Mr. Dark talks as they march. “You’ll travel with us, Jim,” he says. Mr. Dark isn’t sure that Mr. Cooger will survive, and if he should die, he will make Jim his new partner. Afterall, Dark and Nightshade has a nice ring to it, he says. Mr. Dark promises to make Jim a man of twenty-two or twenty-five, but he plans to make Will a baby for the Dwarf to carry. That way Will won’t be able to “talk and tell all the lovely things” he knows.
Mr. Dark’s plan to make Will younger and not older is precisely because of Will’s innate goodness. Making Will a baby—a symbol of innocence and purity—is the only way to keep him from telling the truth. Jim, on the other hand, can apparently be better trusted to embrace evil and even help Mr. Dark run the carnival.
Themes
