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Chapter 4
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 Charles leaves the bar, his “gray hairs” stand up “like antennae.” Outside, a man in a dark suit walks with a roll of paper under his arm, holding a bucket and brush. The man whistles Christmas carols as he hangs something from a telegraph pole. He finishes his work and moves to hang another piece of paper inside an empty store. Charles crosses the street to get a better look, and as he does, the man stares at him and smiles. He gestures toward Charles with an open hand that looks as if it is “covered with fine black silken hair.” The man clenches his fist, then waves at Charles and walks away.
Charles’s gray hair adds to his image as an old man. Presumably, the man in the dark suit is Mr. Dark (his name and suit are an outward reflection of his inner evil) and at such a distance, Charles mistakes his tattoos for hair. The man whistles Christmas carols perhaps because Halloween is his own version of a holy day to be celebrated. Strangely, Mr. Dark arrives before the carnival, like the cotton candy smell.
Themes
Charles crosses the street to the empty store. Inside are two sawhorses, side by side, holding up a block of ice six feet long. There is a spotlight hanging above, and a placard near the window reads: “Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show.” The placard identifies the block of ice as one of their “many attractions: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD!” Charles can remember similar attractions from magician’s shows in his childhood. Usually, “frost maidens lay embedded” in the ice waiting to thaw, but this block of ice appears empty, although not quite. A “voluptuous hollow” sits in the center of the ice like a “cold waiting arctic coffin.”
When Mr. Fury happens across the very same block of ice later in the text there is a woman embedded in it. Since Charles looks on the same attraction and sees nothing, this suggests that he is not tempted by beautiful women. The carnival’s attractions appear different depending on who is looking, and Charles apparently isn’t tempted by the sin of lust—he only longs to be young—so he is able to walk right by the world’s most beautiful woman.
Themes
