CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. The novel is narrated in the third-person omniscient point of view, a narrative point of view that stands outside the story rather than taking a character’s

The novel is narrated in the third-person omniscient point of view, a narrative point of view that stands outside the story rather than taking a character’s perspective. The third-person narrative point of view is able to report on the actions, dialogue, and thoughts or emotions of any or all of the characters, although most third-person narratives tend to focus on several major point of view characters. The major point of view characters in SWTWC are Will and Charles Halloway. Will is the single or major point of view character in twenty chapters, Charles in twelve.

Since the narrative structure describes events that take place at two or three locations simultaneously, the point of view must shift, sometimes quickly, between or within chapters. In nine chapters the perspective shifts between the various point of view characters, sometimes including three or four perspectives. In three chapters the perspective focuses on Will and Jim together; in these chapters they act and respond as one being, and the narrative point of view is reported as “they.” Other characters are the point of view characters only at key points: Tom Fury and Jim in two chapters, Miss Foley in one.

The two characters whose thoughts and emotions we learn the most about are Will and Charles, and they also undergo the most change in their perceptions of the world and of each other. Characters such as Tom Fury and Miss Foley serve important functions without changing: Tom as the messenger who warns the boys of the oncoming storm and as the first “unconnected” person trapped by the carnival, Miss Foley as an important figure in the boys’ lives who is seduced by the carnival’s promises.

Will and Jim are described in the first chapter from the point of view of Tom Fury, the lightning rod salesman. He sees that Will has “milk-blonde hair” and eyes that are “bright and clear as a drop of summer rain,” while Jim has hair “wild, thick, and the glossy color of waxed chestnuts. His eyes…were mint rock-crystal green” (6). The two boys have been neighbors and best friends all their lives. Will was born a minute before midnight on October 30 and Jim one minute later, on Halloween. Even in the first few pages of the novel, the two boys, one light and one dark, are distinguished. Will can hardly wait to install the lightning rod on Jim’s house, but Jim doesn’t want to spoil the fun and is reluctant to act until Will reminds him of his mother.

Both Will and Jim are aware of their differences. In chapter 9, Jim meditates on how they see the world. Jim has seen more than Will, and is too aware of the death that comes to everyone. The two want different things as well, or at least want them at a different time. Their different responses to seeing a naked couple engaged in sexual intercourse show their different levels of maturity, as do their responses to the carnival. Will always tries to oppose Dark and Cooger, but Jim is tempted by the carousel from the start. Throughout the novel, Jim never gives up wanting that ride to physical adulthood, to what he perceives as the greater freedom that adults have. Jim does finally reject the temptation, enough to reach out to Will in order to be rescued at the end.

But the two are also best friends and very similar not only in their birthdates. They are boys: “Like all boys, they never walked anywhere, but named a goal and lit for it, scissors and elbows…. Nobody wanted to win…. they just wanted to run forever, shadow and shadow” (12). They have spent years perfecting a system for communicating—dancing out tunes on an old boardwalk that Will’s grandfather had preserved by moving it to an alley—that lets each one signal the other to join in a night’s adventure.

The plot of the novel sets them in conflict over the carnival; at the start, Will gives way to Jim, who seems the stronger of the two, always telling him yes and going along with him. But Will is the one who rescues Miss Foley, Jim, and Charles from the Mirror Maze, and then pulls Jim off the carousel—although, as Charles makes clear, Jim participates in his own rescue.

Another important relationship between characters is the father-son relationship. Will sees his father as extra protection between himself and the darkness that Jim does not have. At the start of the novel, however, Charles does not see himself as able to protect his son because of age. Charles changes and grows in his own and Will’s estimation through the course of the novel: he rejects Dark’s offer of false youth and goes on to save the boys. Will comes to a new understanding of his father as well. As they talk together after the confession at the police station, and when he sees his father driving Dark and the Witch away, and when they talk in the library, Will grows into an awareness of his father that, at the end, lets them rescue each other from the dark.

The antagonists who oppose Charles and Will are Dark and Cooger, the owners of the carnival. Dark is tall and pale, with “licorice black” hair and yellow eyes, and wears a suit that seems to be bristly and itching (73). Cooger has “flame-red hair, bright flame-blue eyes” (75). Two men opposed to the two boys—both pairs with dark and light coloring. The similarity is made apparent at the start, although it might be more accurate to call them mirror images of the boys, reversed rather than true images. Dark and Cooger are partners, but neither seems willing to go to the lengths for each other that Will does for Jim. In fact, Dark is ready to recruit Jim as a new partner if Cooger does not survive.

The major characters, both the protagonists and the antagonists, are all men. Only four women are mentioned: Mrs. Halloway (Charles’s wife and Will’s mother); Mrs. Nightshade (Jim’s mother); Miss Foley, the boys’ spinster schoolteacher; and the Dust Witch, one of the carnival people. Little or no description is given of the women, and they appear only briefly.

THEMES

The major theme is related to the genre Bradbury has chosen: horror or gothic. The overall plot device of the everyday world being affected by a dark, supernatural force is common in gothic novels and a favorite convention of Bradbury’s. SWTWC is an excellent example of a gothic story. A Midwestern town, two adolescents, and a carnival could have been a nostalgic view of an idyllic past, similar to Dandelion Wine in tone. Bradbury’s tale of spiritual predators who feast off human anguish at the normal processes of life, and who evoke even more anguish by making false promises of eternal youth, turns these nostalgic elements into a suspenseful and horrifying story.

The themes of the story are the spiritual conflict between good and evil—specifically, the goodness of ordinary people, who love family and community, against the evil of the isolated predators, who can band together with others but cannot love. There is little direct violence; instead, the autumn people, the carnival people, play on human fears through a kind of symbolic magic, perhaps because they feed on spiritual anguish rather than physical pain. Charles and Will cannot use physical action against their opponents because it does not work (when forced, Dark is able to physically harm Charles). Instead, Charles and Will learn that laughter, a laughter based on knowledge of people and life, and the emotional connections humans make with each other, primarily through family ties, are the response that robs the predators of their power.

The good-versus-evil theme of the novel is shown not only in the plot and characters, but in Bradbury’s poetic style, in which images carry symbolic or abstract messages. The imagery—words that describe the physical world as experienced through the five senses (touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing)—works throughout the novel to reinforce the theme.

The novel’s first image presented is that of the storm, especially lightning. Tom Fury, with his lighting rods and storm-colored clothing, is the first character introduced, and the carnival arrives with the storm, which is also associated with autumn. The storm is not necessarily allied with the evil of the carnival; lightning hitting the control box of the merry-go-round results in Cooger’s becoming extremely old. When Will battles the Witch on the roof, the wind seems to be trying to help him oppose her balloon. The storm imagery, images from the natural world, can, perhaps by coincidence, work for either “good” or “evil.”

The second major cluster of images is that of light and dark, from the blond hair and light eyes of Will versus the dark chestnut hair and dark eyes of Jim. Jim is more drawn to the shadows of the carnival and so is more at risk. Light and dark are also seen in the opposition of night and day, with the night associated with the forces of evil and day with the forces of good. Day and night clearly structure the novel’s time and plot; the hours from midnight to three o’clock in the morning are particularly open for evil to reign unchecked, whereas sunrise brings some relief for the boys.

A third major image cluster is related to water in its various forms. Frozen water symbolizes time, which can kill a human. The block of ice with the invisible mermaid and the Mirror Maze as a cold devouring sea show the mirror aspect of water. The linking of mirrors with water, and thus negatively with the passage of time, is clearly made in chapter 25, where Miss Foley is said to have ignored the “bright shadows of herself” (in mirrors) for some time. Mirrors are described as “cold sheets of December ice in the hall, above the bureaus, in the bath. Best skate the thin ice, lightly. Paused, the weight of your attention might crack the shell. Plunged through the crust, you might drown” (121).

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