Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) (edit title/settings)

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Characters/People edit see section history

• William Halloway (aka Will): 13 year old boy, Jim's' best friend and next door neighbor; born one minute before midnight on October 30th.
• James Nightshade (aka Jim): 13 year old boy, Will's best friend and next door neighbor; born one minute after midnight on October 31st.
• Charles Halloway: William's father and janitor at the public library.
• Mr. Dark: Co-owner of the dark carnival. He is also known as the Illustrated Man because of his tattoos.
• Mr. Cooger: Co-owner of the dark carnival.
• Miss Foley: James and William's teacher.
• Dust Witch: One of the carnival's side show acts.
• Tom Fury: A lightning rod salesman.
• Mr. Crosetti: The barber.
• Mr. Tetley: Owner of the cigar store.
• Robert: Miss Foley's "nephew".

Quotes edit see section history

• “To late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.”

  Charles Halloway

• “What was there about the boys that made him believe the simplest word they whispered up through the grille? Fear itself was proof here, and he had seen enough fear in his life to know it, like the smell from a butcher's shop in summer twilight.”

• “Two lines of Shakespeare said it. He should write them in the middle of the clock of books, to fix the heart of his apprehension: By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.”

• “Out in the world not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast, marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the place where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off a way were Tibet, Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia calmly toting fragments of Peiping, and Yokohama, and the Celebes. Way down the third book corridor, an oldish man whispered his broom along in the dark, mounding the fallen spices . . .”

• “Boy!" yelled Will. "Folks run like they thought the storm was here!" "It is!" shouted Jim. "Us!”

  Will and Jim

• “Why haven't I stopped to think and smell the last thirty years?”

  Mr. Crosetti

• “The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world. Will Halloway, it was in him young to always look just beyond, over or to one side. So at thirteen he had saved up only six years of staring.”

• “It was in deed a time between, one second their thought all brambled airedale, the next all silken slumbering cat....It was a time after first discoveries but not last ones. It was wanting to know everything and wanting to know nothing.”

• “Dad," said Will, his voice very faint. "Are you a good person?" "To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself—”

  Will and his father

• “Now, look, since when did you think being good meant being happy?" "Since always." "Since now learn other wise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light....Look at me: married at thirty-nine, Will, thirty-nine! But I was so busy wrestling myself two falls out of three, I figured I couldn't marry until I had licked myself good and forever. Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else. So at last I looked up from my great self-wrestling match one night when your mother came to the library for a book, and got me instead. And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between.”

  Charles Halloway

• “The library, then, at seven-fifteen, seven-thirty, seven-forty-five of a Sunday night, cloistered with great drifts of silence and transfixed avalanche of books poised like the cuneiform stones of eternity on shelves, so high the unseen snows of time fell all year there.”

• “. . . . they had hid in the highest trees they could climb and got bored and boredom was worse than fear so they came down . . . .”

• “He gathered the boy somewhat closer and thought, Evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back.”

• “Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he's covering up. He's had his fun and he's guilty. And men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells. Times come when troughs, not tables, suit our appetites. Hear a man too loudly praising others, and look to wonder if he didn't just get up from the sty. On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt and sin, why, often that's your good man with a capital G, Will. For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two.”

  Charles Halloway

• “Because, sometimes good has weapons and evil none. Sometimes tricks fail. Sometimes people can't be picked off, led to deadfalls.”

  Charles Halloway

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Green Town, Illinois

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Ray Bradbury (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3503.R167 S66 1999
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( B ) › Bradbury, Ray
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Something Wicked This Way Comes (IMDb): Released in 1983

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