Reasons for Living - Bradbury Literary Analysis

“I don't try to describe the future, I try to prevent it” this is one of the famous quotes of ray Bradbury. In my opinion this statement and the basic theme of the novel “Something wicked comes this way” is quite closely related. In my opinion novel “Something wicked comes this way” is a reaction towards modernism. With the help of this novel Bradbury attempts to erase feelings of emptiness and hopelessness that the youth of modern world carry with them. Every aspect of the novel proves that point. This tale is a dark dream about a carnival that has traveled from town to town through the ages preying on the yearnings of people who are dissatisfied with their lives. This very phenomenon of dissatisfaction of life creates link between today's world life and the era that is described in this tale. Basically, this whole book and different facets of this book describes life of today's world.

One of the themes of on the basis of which this novel is written is discontentment from life. By addressing this issue Bradbury claims to respond to the discomfort and discontentment that the modern life is suffering from. Reaction to modernism also reflects in Bradbury's writing in this novel if we look at the description of character. For instance, all the emotional turmoil that Jim and will passed through characterizes feelings and fear of today's world. Feelings of Will of leaving behind, of loosing Jim, chaos and disappointing people are the feelings that an individual faces today (Greenberg, 124).

Chief themes of the play are good versus evil, the end of innocence versus lost youth and the nature of fear. All these themes can easily be related to the crux of life that we are leading today (Greenberg, 124).

Just like Jim, Will and Charles are portrayed as good and Mr. Dark and carnival are the presentation of evil. Similarly, the life that we are living in today's era which is full of deceit, corruption and dishonesty there is still some good exists. The presence of evil sources in our world embeds discontentment and escalates hopelessness.

Another notion that is closely related to modern age is time. Presentation of clock, time and the act in which Mr. Halloway pretends to talk to the clock when he is actually communicating with the boys suggests the significance of time that people of today's world face. All of the disparity, discontentment, hopelessness and hollowness are usually because of lack of time management and lack of analyzing the value of time. As in the play different parts of the day possess different meanings and context for instance, evening represents danger and evil similarly, life in today's era is so uncertain that in morning we have different circumstances and consequences and in evening we get different reasons to get worried. But just like laughter and love conquers the carnival's evil work we can also conquer shortcomings and negative aspects of our life.

In this play Bradbury not ...