Something Wicked This Way Comes

Something Wicked This Way Comes

by

Ray Bradbury

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Will Halloway Character Analysis

Jim Nightshade’s best friend and Charles Halloway’s son. Will is the protagonist of Something Wicked This Way Comes, and he serves as the personification of good throughout the novel. He is nearly fourteen years old and was born just one minute before midnight on October 30, which implies that Will is so good, even his birthday is incompatible with the evil connotations associated with Halloween. He has hair “as blond-white as milk-thistle” and eyes as “bright and clear as a drop of summer rain,” and Charles describes him as “the last peach, high on a summer tree.” Everything about Will, from his physical description to his reading habits, reflect his purity and goodness, and he serves as a foil to the dark and conflicted Jim. Despite Will’s inherent goodness, however, he is still not immune to the evil of the carnival, and he must actively resist the wicked Mr. Dark and the temptation of his sinister carousel, which reflects Bradbury’s central argument that good and evil are ultimately a choice that must be continually made. Like Jim, Will too desires to escape the confines of childhood and become a man—although Will only wants to ride the carousel three times around compared to Jim’s desired four turns. Will has a complicated relationship with his father, as he finds the man’s advance age (he’s old enough to be Will’s grandfather) and profession as the library janitor embarrassing. Though Will still deeply loves his father, it isn’t until the carnival threatens to destroy them that he is reminded of this. Will helps Charles to overcome his impossibly old reflection in the carnival’s Mirror Maze, which in turn gives Charles the courage to fight and destroy Mr. Dark. Additionally, it is Will’s love for Jim and the importance of their friendship that saves Jim when he decides to ride the carousel. Will risks his own life to pull Jim from the moving carousel, and in this way, Will represents the power of love to overcome even the strongest evil.

Will Halloway Quotes in Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Something Wicked This Way Comes quotes below are all either spoken by Will Halloway or refer to Will Halloway. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Good vs. Evil Theme Icon
).
Prologue Quotes

And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young anymore…

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Dad winked at Will. Will winked back. They stood now, a boy with corn-colored hair and a man with moon-white hair, a boy with a summer-apple, a man with a winter-apple face. Dad, Dad, thought Will, why, why, he looks…like me in a smashed mirror!

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Charles Halloway
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

And Will? Why he’s the last peach, high on a summer tree. Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they’re not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it’s not that. It’s just, you know, seeing them pass, that’s how they’ll be all their life; they’ll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? How can it happen to them?

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Charles Halloway
Page Number: 16-7
Explanation and Analysis:

But Jim, now, he sees it happen, he watches for it happening, he sees it start, and he sees it finish, he licks the wounds he expected, and never asks why; he knows. He always knew. Someone knew before him, a long time ago, someone who had wolves for pets and lions for night conversants. Hell, Jim doesn’t know with his mind. But his body knows. And while Will’s putting a bandage on his latest scratch, Jim’s ducking, weaving, bouncing away from the knockout blow which must inevitably come.

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade, Charles Halloway
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

His wife smiled in her sleep.

Why?

She’s immortal. She has a son.

Your son, too!

But what father ever really believes it? He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who they know will live forever.

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Charles Halloway, Will’s Mother / Mrs. Halloway
Related Symbols: Clocks
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

Will saw the evil boy, a year older still, glide around into the night. Five or six more times around and he’d be bigger than the two of them!

“Jim, he’ll kill us!”

“Not me, no!”

Will felt a sting of electricity. He yelled, pulled back, hit the switch handle. The control box spat. Lightning jumped to the sky, Jim and Will, flung by the blast, lay watching the merry-go-round run wild.

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Jim Nightshade (speaker), Mr. Cooger / Robert / Mr. Electrico
Related Symbols: The Carousel
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“Oh, Jim, Jim, you do see, don’t you? Everything in its time, like the preacher said only last month, everything one by one, not two by two, will you remember?”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Jim Nightshade
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

“[…] Now, look, since when did you think being good meant being happy?”

“Since always.”

“Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he’s covering up. He’s had his fun and he’s guilty. And men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells. […]”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker)
Page Number: 124-5
Explanation and Analysis:

“Oh, it would be lovely if you could just be fine, act fine, not think of it all the time. But it’s hard, right? With the last piece of lemon cake waiting in the icebox, middle of the night, not yours, but you lie awake in a hot sweat for it, eh? Do I need tell you? Or, a hot spring day, noon, and there you are chained to your school desk and away off there goes the river, cool and fresh over the rock-fall. Boys can hear clear water like that miles away. So, minute by minutes, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops, you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that’s what the clock ticks, that’s what it says in the ticks.”

Related Characters: Charles Halloway (speaker), Will Halloway
Related Symbols: Clocks
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“‘For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.’”

Related Characters: Charles Halloway (speaker), Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade
Page Number: 176
Explanation and Analysis:

“Then—” Will swallowed— “does that make us…summer people?”

“Not quite.” Charles Halloway shook his head. “Oh, you’re nearer summer than me. If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that’s long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we’ve stashed away. But there are times when we’re all autumn people.”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker)
Page Number: 176-7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 39 Quotes

“Oh gosh,” said Will. “It’s hopeless!”

“No. The very fact we’re here worrying about the difference between summer and autumn, makes me sure there’s a way out. You don’t have to stay foolish and you don’t have to be wrong, evil, sinful, whatever you want to call it. There’s more than three or four choices. They, that Dark fellow and his friends don’t hold all the cards, I could tell that today, at the cigar store. I’m afraid of him but, I could see, he was afraid of me. So there’s fear on both sides. Now how can we use it to advantage?”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker), Mr. Dark / The Illustrated Man / Jed
Page Number: 178-9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

“Is…is it…Death?”

“The carnival?” The old man lit his pipe, blew smoke, seriously studied the patterns. “No. But I think it uses Death as a threat. Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing. And the carnival wisely knows we’re more afraid of Nothing than we are of Something. You can fight Something. But…Nothing? Where do you hit it? Has it a heart, soul, butt-behind, brain? No, no. So the carnival just shakes a great croupier’s cupful of Nothing at us, and reaps us as we tumble back head-over-heels in fright.”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker)
Related Symbols: Clocks
Page Number: 186-7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 54 Quotes

“Will!” His father savagely jabbed a finger at him and at Jim. “Damn it, Willy, all this, all these, Mr. Dark and his sort, they like crying, my God, they love tears! Jesus God, the more you bawl, the more they drink the salt off your chin. Wail and they suck your breath like cats. Get up! Get off your knees, damn it! Jump around! Whoop and holler! You hear! Shout, Will, sing, but most of all laugh, you got that, laugh!”

Related Characters: Charles Halloway (speaker), Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade, Mr. Dark / The Illustrated Man / Jed
Page Number: 255
Explanation and Analysis:

“Dad, will they ever come back?”

“No. And yes.” Dad tucked away his harmonica. “No, not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they’ll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at latest, sunset tomorrow they’ll show. They’re on the road.”

“Oh, no,” said Will.

“Oh, yes,” said Dad. “We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight’s just begun.”

They moved around the carousel slowly.

“What will they look like? How will we know them?”

“Why,” said Dad, quietly, “maybe they’re already here.”

Both boys looked around swiftly.

But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves.

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker), Jim Nightshade
Related Symbols: The Carousel
Page Number: 260
Explanation and Analysis:

The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we’ve done fine tonight. Even Death can’t spoil it. So, there went the boys…and why not…follow?

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade, Charles Halloway
Page Number: 262
Explanation and Analysis:
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Will Halloway Quotes in Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Something Wicked This Way Comes quotes below are all either spoken by Will Halloway or refer to Will Halloway. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Good vs. Evil Theme Icon
).
Prologue Quotes

And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young anymore…

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Dad winked at Will. Will winked back. They stood now, a boy with corn-colored hair and a man with moon-white hair, a boy with a summer-apple, a man with a winter-apple face. Dad, Dad, thought Will, why, why, he looks…like me in a smashed mirror!

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Charles Halloway
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

And Will? Why he’s the last peach, high on a summer tree. Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they’re not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it’s not that. It’s just, you know, seeing them pass, that’s how they’ll be all their life; they’ll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? How can it happen to them?

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Charles Halloway
Page Number: 16-7
Explanation and Analysis:

But Jim, now, he sees it happen, he watches for it happening, he sees it start, and he sees it finish, he licks the wounds he expected, and never asks why; he knows. He always knew. Someone knew before him, a long time ago, someone who had wolves for pets and lions for night conversants. Hell, Jim doesn’t know with his mind. But his body knows. And while Will’s putting a bandage on his latest scratch, Jim’s ducking, weaving, bouncing away from the knockout blow which must inevitably come.

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade, Charles Halloway
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

His wife smiled in her sleep.

Why?

She’s immortal. She has a son.

Your son, too!

But what father ever really believes it? He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who they know will live forever.

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Charles Halloway, Will’s Mother / Mrs. Halloway
Related Symbols: Clocks
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

Will saw the evil boy, a year older still, glide around into the night. Five or six more times around and he’d be bigger than the two of them!

“Jim, he’ll kill us!”

“Not me, no!”

Will felt a sting of electricity. He yelled, pulled back, hit the switch handle. The control box spat. Lightning jumped to the sky, Jim and Will, flung by the blast, lay watching the merry-go-round run wild.

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Jim Nightshade (speaker), Mr. Cooger / Robert / Mr. Electrico
Related Symbols: The Carousel
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“Oh, Jim, Jim, you do see, don’t you? Everything in its time, like the preacher said only last month, everything one by one, not two by two, will you remember?”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Jim Nightshade
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

“[…] Now, look, since when did you think being good meant being happy?”

“Since always.”

“Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he’s covering up. He’s had his fun and he’s guilty. And men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells. […]”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker)
Page Number: 124-5
Explanation and Analysis:

“Oh, it would be lovely if you could just be fine, act fine, not think of it all the time. But it’s hard, right? With the last piece of lemon cake waiting in the icebox, middle of the night, not yours, but you lie awake in a hot sweat for it, eh? Do I need tell you? Or, a hot spring day, noon, and there you are chained to your school desk and away off there goes the river, cool and fresh over the rock-fall. Boys can hear clear water like that miles away. So, minute by minutes, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops, you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that’s what the clock ticks, that’s what it says in the ticks.”

Related Characters: Charles Halloway (speaker), Will Halloway
Related Symbols: Clocks
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“‘For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.’”

Related Characters: Charles Halloway (speaker), Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade
Page Number: 176
Explanation and Analysis:

“Then—” Will swallowed— “does that make us…summer people?”

“Not quite.” Charles Halloway shook his head. “Oh, you’re nearer summer than me. If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that’s long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we’ve stashed away. But there are times when we’re all autumn people.”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker)
Page Number: 176-7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 39 Quotes

“Oh gosh,” said Will. “It’s hopeless!”

“No. The very fact we’re here worrying about the difference between summer and autumn, makes me sure there’s a way out. You don’t have to stay foolish and you don’t have to be wrong, evil, sinful, whatever you want to call it. There’s more than three or four choices. They, that Dark fellow and his friends don’t hold all the cards, I could tell that today, at the cigar store. I’m afraid of him but, I could see, he was afraid of me. So there’s fear on both sides. Now how can we use it to advantage?”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker), Mr. Dark / The Illustrated Man / Jed
Page Number: 178-9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

“Is…is it…Death?”

“The carnival?” The old man lit his pipe, blew smoke, seriously studied the patterns. “No. But I think it uses Death as a threat. Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing. And the carnival wisely knows we’re more afraid of Nothing than we are of Something. You can fight Something. But…Nothing? Where do you hit it? Has it a heart, soul, butt-behind, brain? No, no. So the carnival just shakes a great croupier’s cupful of Nothing at us, and reaps us as we tumble back head-over-heels in fright.”

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker)
Related Symbols: Clocks
Page Number: 186-7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 54 Quotes

“Will!” His father savagely jabbed a finger at him and at Jim. “Damn it, Willy, all this, all these, Mr. Dark and his sort, they like crying, my God, they love tears! Jesus God, the more you bawl, the more they drink the salt off your chin. Wail and they suck your breath like cats. Get up! Get off your knees, damn it! Jump around! Whoop and holler! You hear! Shout, Will, sing, but most of all laugh, you got that, laugh!”

Related Characters: Charles Halloway (speaker), Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade, Mr. Dark / The Illustrated Man / Jed
Page Number: 255
Explanation and Analysis:

“Dad, will they ever come back?”

“No. And yes.” Dad tucked away his harmonica. “No, not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they’ll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at latest, sunset tomorrow they’ll show. They’re on the road.”

“Oh, no,” said Will.

“Oh, yes,” said Dad. “We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight’s just begun.”

They moved around the carousel slowly.

“What will they look like? How will we know them?”

“Why,” said Dad, quietly, “maybe they’re already here.”

Both boys looked around swiftly.

But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves.

Related Characters: Will Halloway (speaker), Charles Halloway (speaker), Jim Nightshade
Related Symbols: The Carousel
Page Number: 260
Explanation and Analysis:

The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we’ve done fine tonight. Even Death can’t spoil it. So, there went the boys…and why not…follow?

Related Characters: Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade, Charles Halloway
Page Number: 262
Explanation and Analysis: