Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when the second witch says:<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the pricking of my thumbs,<\/strong><\/p>\n Something wicked this way comes.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n And Macbeth enters.\u00a0 What a marvelous scene.\u00a0 Witches, bloody ghosts and a demigod truly drained of his humanity.\u00a0 A horror story in a stage play.\u00a0 And then Ray Bradbury takes that line, \u201cSomething wicked this way comes\u201d and makes it the title of his own American ghost story; the story of a haunted carnival.\u00a0 Now what does Macbeth have to do with Bradbury?\u00a0 Well, in both cases we have basically good people seduced by the devil.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s Shakespeare\u2019s witches or Bradbury\u2019s Mr. Dark it is the story of men succumbing to the devil\u2019s promise for their heart\u2019s desire in exchange for their souls.<\/p>\n Macbeth wants the Scottish crown.\u00a0 Bradbury\u2019s Green Town denizens want various things.\u00a0 Tom Fury and Mr. Crosetti succumb to lust.\u00a0 Mr. Tetley wants money. \u00a0Miss Foley and Charles Halloway want their youth back.\u00a0 Jim Nightshade wants to be older so he can indulge his various negative desires.\u00a0 And for these things they risk becoming permanent prisoners of Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger\u2019s haunted carnival travelling the American continent in search of more souls to consume.<\/p>\n What a marvelous conceit.\u00a0 An ancient locomotive from the Civil War era, arrives in small towns in the middle of the night and sniffs out the spiritually wounded inhabitants and lures them into the haunted attractions of the show.\u00a0 If they wander into the house of mirrors, they will see their heart\u2019s desire or their greatest fear.\u00a0 Or they can follow the barker\u2019s lure and enter the tent where the belly dancers expose their bodies for a silver dime.\u00a0 And those that disappear are no longer recognizable as themselves and so cannot be rescued by any police force.<\/p>\n And redemption can only be had in Bradbury\u2019s story if the devil is laughed out of town.\u00a0 Laughter and happiness are the only cures for this evil.\u00a0 The secret is to realize that life is not a tragedy.\u00a0 Even at its worst, it is better than the alternative which is nothingness.\u00a0 Pain and sadness and even death are a human story and in fact the only certainty in this world.\u00a0 But it\u2019s also still better than never existing.\u00a0 Because no matter how sad and awful our existence, it\u2019s still ours.\u00a0 We get to feel it and react to it and maybe win a few rounds before we\u2019re finally cornered and beaten by death.<\/p>\n So, the ride\u2019s the thing.\u00a0 That\u2019s the lesson that Charles Halloway learns by the end of the story.\u00a0 Even though he\u2019s old and overwhelmed with trying to be the father of a young boy, that overwhelming challenge is his greatest opportunity to squeeze every bit of meaning and gusto out of what remains of his life.\u00a0 And the boys get to see that fears and desires are exaggerations of the simple stuff of human life.\u00a0 Lust and greed and fear are just the ingredients of life taken out of balance from their normal proportions and occasions.<\/p>\n I wonder who will take this theme up next?\u00a0 Maybe I will, someday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when the second witch says: \u201cBy the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.\u201d And<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,2510,1263,2511,237,4,242],"tags":[4280,737,1392,295,1393],"class_list":["post-34584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-literature","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-poetry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-evil","tag-macbeth","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-shakespeare","tag-something-wicked-this-way-comes"],"yoast_head":"\n