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
In the distance, Will can hear the music of the calliope, but he can’t tell if it is playing forward or backward. Running in the direction of the carousel Will stops. “Mr. Electrico!” he thinks. “Kill or cure!” Will looks to the surrounding tents and sees the Dwarf standing near the other freaks. Will asks Charles why the freaks don’t try to stop them. “Scared,” answers Charles. They watched the Witch die, and they worry that they will be next. Will can hear the music more clearly now. It had been playing backward, but now it is playing forward.
Presumably, Mr. Electrico is en route to the carousel to transform back into Mr. Cooger, but when the music begins to play forward, this suggests otherwise. Mr. Dark seems to know that Mr. Cooger is a lost cause and can’t be cured, so he plays the music forward instead to lure Jim (who is to replace Mr. Cooger) to the carousel. Once again, the freaks’ fear of Charles and his happiness works in Will and Charles’s favor.
Themes
A group of freaks appear carrying Mr. Electrico in the electric chair toward the carousel. Suddenly, the freaks “jump and scurry,” and drop the chair. Charles sneezes as a strong wind stirs up the dust around the tents. The chair sits on an angle, empty. “But,” says Will. “Where’s Mr. Electrico? I mean…Mr. Cooger!?” Charles looks down to the dust. “That must have been him?” he questions.
The dust that causes Charles to sneeze is what is left of Mr. Electrico. Instead of eternal life, the carousel has been Mr. Cooger’s undoing, and the forward motion of the carousel suggests that Mr. Dark never intended to cure him in the first place. He feels no loyalty to his entertainers, and easily casts them aside.
Themes
Jim appears between the fallen chair and the carousel. “Jim!” yells Will. Mr. Dark is nowhere to be found, but Will knows that he started the carousel to draw Jim in. As Will watches, Jim “walks slowly toward the free, free ride.” Charles tells Will to “go get him” and runs for the control box.
Jim walks willingly to the carousel with only the music to tempt him. Mr. Dark can’t force Jim—he must ride of his own accord. He seems supernaturally drawn in, but this is also a sign of the “darkness” in Jim’s nature—he cannot resist where Will can.
Themes
Jim reaches out for the brass poles of the moving carousel. He slaps his hand from pole to pole as the ride picks up speed, and then he firmly grasps one and pulls himself up on the carousel. “Jim, get off!” Will yells. “Jim, don’t leave me here!” Will runs next to the carousel, wildly screaming to Charles to shut it down. Jim’s eyes look blank. “Jim, please!” Will yells again as he jumps on the carousel next to him.
If Jim rides the carousel and becomes older, he will effectively leave Will behind in childhood. Will would rather ride the carousel with Jim than stay a child alone, however—the strongest evidence possible of their friendship and Will’s love for Jim.
Themes
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For a moment, both Will and Jim “ride the night.” After “traveling half a year,” Will rips Jim from the carousel, and both boys fall to the ground just as Charles shuts down the ride and the empty carousel slows. “Oh, God,” cries Will. “Is he dead?”
As Will and Jim “ride the night,” they both become six months older and also lose another degree of innocence. Just as Bradbury writes at the beginning of the novel, they will never be “so young” again.
Themes
