JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 285 из 359Cooger, who has lived for thousands of years, pays for his life of dark degeneracy by becoming a Thing even more ancient, ancient almost beyond our ability to comprehend, kept alive bya steady flow of electricity. The Human Skeleton is paying for miserliness of feeling; the fat lady for physical or emotional gluttony; the dust witch for her gossipy meddling in the lives of others. The carnival has done to them what the undertaker in that old Bradbury horror story did to his victims after they had died.
On its Apollonian side, the book asks us to recall and reexamine the facts and myths of our own childhoods, most specifically our small-town American childhoods. Written in a semipoetic style that seems to suit such concerns perfectly, Bradbury examines these childhood concerns and comes to the conclusion that only children are equipped to deal with childhood's myths and terrors and exhalations. In his midfifties story "The Playground," a man who returns magically to childhood is propelled into a world of lunatic horror which is only, after all, the corner playground with its sandboxes and its slippery slide.
In Something Wicked This Way Comes , Bradbury interconnects this small-town American boyhood motif with most of the ideas of the new American gothic which we have already discussed to some extent. Will and Jim are essentially okay, essentially Apollonian, riding easy in their childhoods and used to looking at the world from their shorter height. But when their teacher, Miss Foley, returns .to childhood-the first of the carnival's Green Town victims-she enters a world of monotonous, unending horror which is not much different from that experienced by the protagonist of "The Playground." The boys discover Miss Foley-or what remains of her-under a tree . . . . and there was the little girl, crouched, face buried in her hands, weeping as if the town were gone and the people in it and herself lost in a terrible woods.
And at last Jim came edging up and stood at the edge of the shadow and said, "Who is it?” "I don't know." But Will felt tears start to his eyes, as if some part of him guessed.
"It's not jenny Holdridge, is it?” "No.” "Jane Franklin?” "No." His mouth felt full of novocaine, his tongue merely stirred in his numb lips. ". . . no . . .” The little girl wept feeling them near, but not looking up yet.
“. . . me . . . help me . . . nobody'll help me . . . me . . . me . . . I don't like this . . . somebody must help me . . . someone must help her . . ." she mourned as for one dead, ". . . someone must help her . . . nobody will . . . nobody has . . . terrible . . . terrible . . .
On its Apollonian side, the book asks us to recall and reexamine the facts and myths of our own childhoods, most specifically our small-town American childhoods. Written in a semipoetic style that seems to suit such concerns perfectly, Bradbury examines these childhood concerns and comes to the conclusion that only children are equipped to deal with childhood's myths and terrors and exhalations. In his midfifties story "The Playground," a man who returns magically to childhood is propelled into a world of lunatic horror which is only, after all, the corner playground with its sandboxes and its slippery slide.
In Something Wicked This Way Comes , Bradbury interconnects this small-town American boyhood motif with most of the ideas of the new American gothic which we have already discussed to some extent. Will and Jim are essentially okay, essentially Apollonian, riding easy in their childhoods and used to looking at the world from their shorter height. But when their teacher, Miss Foley, returns .to childhood-the first of the carnival's Green Town victims-she enters a world of monotonous, unending horror which is not much different from that experienced by the protagonist of "The Playground." The boys discover Miss Foley-or what remains of her-under a tree . . . . and there was the little girl, crouched, face buried in her hands, weeping as if the town were gone and the people in it and herself lost in a terrible woods.
And at last Jim came edging up and stood at the edge of the shadow and said, "Who is it?” "I don't know." But Will felt tears start to his eyes, as if some part of him guessed.
"It's not jenny Holdridge, is it?” "No.” "Jane Franklin?” "No." His mouth felt full of novocaine, his tongue merely stirred in his numb lips. ". . . no . . .” The little girl wept feeling them near, but not looking up yet.
“. . . me . . . help me . . . nobody'll help me . . . me . . . me . . . I don't like this . . . somebody must help me . . . someone must help her . . ." she mourned as for one dead, ". . . someone must help her . . . nobody will . . . nobody has . . . terrible . . . terrible . . .