Throughout Something Wicked This Way Comes there is an ongoing battle between good and evil, and many problems dealing with greed. In most stories good prevails, but things happen differently this time. The characters have problems with greed and evil thoughts, which will bring them misfortune throughout the story. During the story the author often uses foreshadowing to give hints to the reader of things that will happen in the future. When the story starts, a storm is coming on a late October night. The storm symbolizes the evil approaching the town. Usually it seems a storm would resemble something dark and evil, because a stormy night is always a classic setting for something evil. At the climax of the story, Charles Halloway reads a passage from Shakespeare which says, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." Again, this passage tells of an evil that is approaching. This sets a dark mood to the story and hints the climax is starting. The reader is told of the evils coming, but there is not enough good in the townspeople for them to all realize the situation. Throughout the story, Jim and Will, who are both around thirteen and are the main characters in the story, are the only people who understand the evil and try to fight it. When Mr. Cougar nearly dies, the police do not believe Jim and Will’s story. This shows that some people try to ignore seeing the truth. When Jim and Will tell Mrs. Foley about the mirror maze, she does not listen to them at all. Mrs. Foley, like many others in the book is somewhat stubborn when it comes to seeing the truth. Mrs. Foley instead learns the truth the hard way by being tricked by the carnival. If some of the characters in the story choose to listen to Jim and Will, the evil may easily have been stopped. During the story, greed makes some of the characters suffer horribly. When Mrs. Foley sees herself as a kid in the mirror maze, she desires to become yo...
