Something Wicked This Way Comes Ray Bradbury

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“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones” (Stephen King). Different books each get written for a different reason. Books in the genre gothic literature got written for reasons like the one stated by Stephen King. Whatever the reason, Ray Bradbury wrote a work of gothic literature using those ideas. In Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, it exemplifies the literary movement of gothic literature in which the setting, characterization, plot, symbols, and theme, revolve around supernatural ideas encompassed with eeriness, fear, and trepidation.
Where a novel takes place, and the surroundings the characters live around, tells the reader a lot about the story. The novel by Ray Bradbury in particular illustrates a …show more content…
Most events of the story transpire in a similar mystic atmosphere with “...everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight…” (Bradbury 1). At the beginning of the book a storm transpires in the setting. In general storms relate with darkness and fear. Relating to the concept of gothic literature, a storm in the text brings out the elements of the literary movement. The carnival endures another important piece of the setting. Unlike any other friendly carnival, it involves a freak show with many strange things occurring that one wouldn’t normally see on a regular basis. The setting could send shivers down the readers back.
Characters of a story exist as another defining point of which literary movement a certain text may fit in. Something Wicked This Way Comes contains many characters throughout the book that possess gothic traits. The first character introduced in a chapter, the lightning rod salesman, came to town to sell lightning rods that included hieroglyphic writing on it for a storm that never came. The salesman contained a mystical sense to his personality that could make the reader infer he knew about the …show more content…
The theme exemplifies what the author tries to portray throughout his creative writing process. Something Wicked This Way Comes illustrates the theme of that fear as a choice, and avoidable if you truly try. In the story Jim acquired no fear of the carnival, or of anything. Both Will and Charles obtain unsure feelings and possess fear of the evil carnival. Towards the end Will and Charles realized that fear held no necessity, and in order to defeat evil, they can choose not to be afraid. Gothic literature goes against what people believed as right. Instead, the ideas written went against public thinking. Ideas that went against society included the things that people feared. Authors of gothic literature found that that fearing forbidden ideas held no necessity, but to embrace the ideas instead. Along with other gothic authors, Ray Bradbury himself expressed his work through “an extraordinary range of intellectual, social, and cultural issues” (Boswell and Rollyson). Gothic literature carries a purpose to learn the permissibility of not believing in
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