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Chapter 42
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 Mr. Dark grabs for Will, Will sees the tattoo of himself on the man’s palm. Then, Jim sees his own face as Mr. Dark grabs him with the other hand. “Dad!” yells Will. Charles runs into the room and punches Mr. Dark, and then the man grabs Charles’s left hand and begins to squeeze. Will and Jim can hear the bones in his hand snapping. “Damn you!” Charles yells.
Mr. Dark’s ability to so easily break Charles’s arm is a display of his physical power, which in addition to his supernatural power makes Mr. Dark an even more formidable force.
Themes
From a nearby window, Will can see his mother walking home from church along with Jim’s mother, and they both appear the appropriate age. Will yells down to them but they don’t hear, and he begins to cry. Mr. Dark drags Will and Jim out the front door, where they pass the Dust Witch outside. “The janitor’s clock,” Mr. Dark says to the Witch. “Stop it.”
Again, Bradbury makes a connection between clocks and life. While Charles’s wife’s “clock” is the source of her symbolic immortality, Charles’s “clock,” or heart, is the source of his mortality and vulnerability.
Themes
