Fear, the Supernatural, and the Unknown Theme Analysis

Something Wicked This Way Comes begins just one week before Halloween, and the novel is fittingly pervaded by a sense of fear and filled with references to the supernatural. Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade’s own names reflect this spooky holiday, which also happens to be Jim’s birthday (Will, for his part, was born just one minute before Halloween). When Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show arrives, it is not long before a palpable dread blankets the entire town. Mr. Dark and the carnival rely on the town’s natural fear of the unknown, using seemingly unexplainable—and, the thinking goes, unstoppable—supernatural elements to terrorize the town. According to Will’s father, Charles, “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?…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.” It is only after Charles faces Mr. Dark head on and confronts his fears that he can finally defeat the evil of the traveling carnival, and it is in this way that Bradbury effectively argues that fear only has as much power as individuals grant it. The carnival itself further becomes an allegory for fear of the unknown, and it’s only by facing that fear—by effectively accepting that certain things cannot be explained or understood—that it can be defeated.

Mr. Dark and his side show freaks rely on the supernatural to threaten Green Town, and they actively terrorize the people. As the carnival pulls into town, a railcar hauls a mysterious calliope that appears to be playing by itself. Will and Jim stare in disbelief as the musical instrument “wails” with no one at the keyboard, chilled and entranced by what appears to be a supernatural event unfolding right before their eyes. Later, when Mr. Cooger, Mr. Dark’s business partner, rides on the carnival’s broken carousel in reverse with Chopin’s “Funeral March” playing backwards, the middle-aged man transforms into a boy of twelve. Mr. Cooger stays this way until he again rides the merry-go-round, this time in the opposite direction, and transforms into an old man. The Dust Witch, Mr. Dark’s most powerful freak, can stop the human heart using only her thoughts, and she can also “feel” the thoughts of others. Additionally, Mr. Dark too has the power to shift into a younger version of himself, and he even has strange tattoos of Will and Jim on the palms of his hands that inflict physical pain on the boys when he clenches his fists and wrings his hands. Mr. Dark and the freaks instill fear through their use of supernatural power. The supernatural nature of the carnival compounds its terror, which seems to be something inexplicable and uncontrollable.

Furthermore, while Jim, Will, and Charles are convinced that the carnival is responsible for the disappearance of several people in town, there is an air of mystery that surrounds these disappearances, which implies a fear of the unknown. As Will lays eyes on the Dwarf in Mr. Dark’s freakshow, Will is certain that he recognizes him. “I know him,” thinks Will. “Oh, God, what they’ve done to him! The lightning-rod salesman! That’s who it is. Squeezed tight, smashed small, convulsed by some terrible nature into a clenched fist of humanity…” Will doesn’t know how Mr. Dark has done it, but the Dwarf is clearly Mr. Fury. After Will and Jim find Miss Foley, their fifty-year-old schoolteacher, transformed into a terrified young girl after riding Cooger and Dark’s carousel, she quickly vanishes. Bradbury never reveals what happens to Miss Foley after Charles defeats Mr. Dark and the evil carnival and this too adds to the fear of the unknown within Something Wicked This Way Comes. Mr. Crosetti, the local barber, likewise goes missing when the carnival comes to town. Like Miss Foley, Mr. Crosetti’s fate is never revealed. The mystery surrounding all of these events further adds to the story’s sense of dread.

Above all, the carnival attempts to frighten its victims through its invocation of the ultimate unknown: death. The carnival notably taps into Charles’s own fear of growing old and the sense of mortality that inevitably entails. Charles appreciates the “simplicity” of the carnival’s efforts to scare him. “Hit an old man with mirrors,” he says, “watch his pieces fall in jigsaws of ice only the carnival can put together again. How? Waltz around back on the carousel to ‘Beautiful Ohio’ or ‘Merry Widow.’” Yet in the end, when Charles destroys Mr. Dark, he does so by denying the fear and power that the carnival has. “Evil has only the power that we give it,” Charles says. “I give you nothing. I take back. Starve. Starve. Starve.” When Charles finally refuses to believe in the evil of Mr. Dark and the death that he represents, and once he accepts his own advancing age and mortality, Charles is finally able to overcome his fears and defeat the sinister carnival.