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 Will makes his way home, he hears Jim run up behind him. “Theater closed?” Will asks. “Nobody home,” Jim answers. The two laugh and suddenly a wad of paper blows by and sticks to Jim’s leg. It is a flyer for a traveling carnival, “COMING, OCTOBER TWENTY-FOURTH!” the boys read. “It can’t be,” Will says, carnivals never come after Labor Day. Jim continues reading, excitedly. “MR. ELECTRICO!” he reads. “THE ILLUSTRATED MAN! Hey!” Jim yells. “That’s just an old guy with tattoos,” Will says.
Cooger and Dark are “autumn people,” as Charles later explains, and they only travel during the fall months. Autumn, especially October, is associated with evil throughout the novel, and therefore the carnival comes late in the year, long after other carnivals stop traveling. The evil of the carnival is incompatible with summer months, which Bradbury associates with good.
Themes
Jim’s excitement can’t be contained. “THE DUST WITCH! What’s a Dust Witch, Will?” he asks. “Dirty old Gypsy—” Will answers. Jim continues reading the flyer, which boasts an Egyptian Mirror Maze— “SEE YOURSELF TEN THOUSAND TIMES”—and Saint Anthony’s Temple of Temptation. Lastly, the flyer promises “THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD.”
The carnival attractions latch onto the town’s inner desires and use temptation to lure them to evil. The Mirror Maze reflects the patrons’ desires to be either older or younger, and “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” uses lust to trap the unsuspecting carnival-goers.
Themes
“It’s not true anyway,” Will says. No way is a carnival coming in October. “Who’d go to it?” he asks. “Me,” says Jim. Me too, thinks Will. “That music,” Jim reminds Will. It must have been calliope music (a kind of circus instrument), he says, and the cotton candy smell— “Must be coming tonight!” Jim shrieks. Will doubts it; carnivals usually set up early in the morning. “Let’s go home,” Will says to Jim. “We are home!” Jim says, walking up the path to his front door. “Night!” Jim yells, slamming the front door. Will looks to the lightning rod atop the house “glittering against the cold stars.” He is glad it is up there.
The lightning rod represents protection from evil and fear, and even though Will doesn’t quite know what he is afraid of, it still makes him feel better. Will and Jim show their youth and relative innocence in their excitement over the carnival. While they both long to be older and escape the rules imposed by their parents, they are nevertheless children who enjoy typical children’s things.
Themes
