LITERATURE: Something Wicked This Way Comes – Finale

I’ve mentioned in prior posts my admiration of Ray Bradbury’s writing: terrific imagery; great buildup of story via foreshadowing; excellent character development using dialogue, interaction, point of view insight; excellent form implementing plot that constructs blocks of relative traits of human nature–fear, love, dreams.

I can’t help thinking of the Judge in McCarthy’s Blood Meridian as I watch Bradbury’s Mr. Dark.  There is the same evil under the smooth smile.   Dark is the illustrated man, tatooed with odditities–including images of his absorbed victims, well aware, as likely would be the devil, of the regrets of men as well as their desires.  Youth wants to grow up quickly, ever wanting to be those few extra years older to stay up after eight, have the eleven  p.m. curfew, get their license, drink openly, not answer to anyone else.  And age wants the youth of the body, whilst retaining the experience of the mind.  Dark’s offer to make these dreams reality by his forward and backward crazy carousel is so very tempting to all.

I think one of the most influential elements on the reading of this novel would be the age of the reader.  It will obviously appeal and be understood by any age, yet the understanding will be affected by perception of looking ahead or looking back.  Youth, after all, will eventually grow older in time; age can only remember.

There’s another thread of meaning within Something Wicked that is delivered in a soliloquy by Will’s father, Charles Halloway as he puts the pieces of the mystery together.  He discovers the smile, the love. the confidence that is the only weapon against what is not truly evil, this natural inclination and desire.  The tools Dark uses such as the maze of mirrors to show us ourselves is just a magnafier of the little ticks within all of us that may show up as a deep regret or simply a sigh.  What Halloway learns is the honesty of acceptance and the acceptance of honesty. What Bradbury warns is that the capacity in each of us is a constant:

"Dad, will they ever com 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 the latest, sunset tomorrow, they’ll show.  They’re on the road."

(…) The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night.  Just three times around, ahead, thought Will.  Hey.  Just four times around, ahead, though Jim.  Boy.  Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Halloway.  Lord.  Each read the thoughts in the other’s eyes.  (p. 288)

Bradbury is being philosophical, coming close to proposing a moral but the fact is, we already know all this and that’s why it is so relative, so familiar, and this is why it succeeds as story: it bothers.