Complications In Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'

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A complicated relationship between a father and son can be very frustrating for both people. The complications, however, generally dissolve or resolve themselves over time. In the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, the main character, Will Halloway, and his father, Charles Halloway, share a troublesome relationship. The complications come from when Will tries to protect Charles from dangers and when Charles doesn’t believe he is a good father to Will. As the story progresses, the relationship changes from where it was at the beginning to the middle, from the middle to the end. The complications get resolved through the adventures that they face, because they end up facing those adventures together. At the beginning …show more content…

However, neither one thinks the other one is thinking anything similar to what theirself is thinking: “me sad because no one notices except me and Dad here maybe, and even us not telling each other” (133). Will starts to grasp that he and Charles may actually think about some of the same things and can use that to start a conversation between them and work on their relationship at the same time. Moreover, Charles and Will have a similar mindset when “they lingered reluctant as boys to give over and wander in wide circles to pillow and night thoughts” (133). One can only speculate whether or not Charles and Will knew that they both were feeling reluctant as boys, but it is obvious that the anxiety between Charles and Will, is diminishing. In addition to this improvement of the relationship, Will doesn’t know if Charles can even climb Will’s ladder, but he “didn’t want to leave him behind, there in the night, like someone ditched by someone else”, so he convinces Charles to climb up the ladder with Will. As they are climbing the ladder and once they get all the way up, they become as one: “ They swung in and sat upon the sill, same size, same weight, colored by the same stars, and sat embraced once more with grand fine exhaustion, gasping on huge ingulped laughs which swept the bones together” (139). Will and Charles are finally starting to truly

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