Chapter 1 - Arrivals

Wide Angle Wednesday: Chapter 1 - Arrivals

Ray Bradbury's story Something Wicked This Way Comes tells of an October night when a sinister travelling carnival pulls into a midwestern town, and its impact upon the lives of two young boys who are trembling on the edge of the move from child to adult.  

Chapter 1 is titled "Arrivals" and sets the scene for the arrival at 3 am in the morning, on a fire-breathing dragon of a train of Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show.  The novel is mostly set during the hours of darkness and darkness is very much a theme as the novel holds up a distorting mirror to the hopes and fears of small-town America. 

Of course its April now, and the dormitory towns of Bristol and Bath seem a world away from small-town America, but you can imagine my surprise earlier in the week when a circus turned up unsuspectingly on our doorstep.  Far too good an opportunity for a blip for me to miss it!