“And they looked up through the levels of the great house and saw every age, every story, and all the men in history staring round about as the sun rose and set. Ape-men trembled. Egyptians cried laments. Greeks and Romans paraded their dead. Summer fell dead. Winter put it in the grave. A billion voices wept.” Ray Bradbury | The Halloween Tree
An ending so soon. I think the last book study felt like ages, so having this book done and analyzed in less than a month shocked me when I realized we were already at the end of the story. But that’s okay, because all good stories must come to an end (all stories good or bad for that matter).
We left the boys at Notre Dame still looking for their friend Pipkin who was mysteriously swept away through time. Today, we are going to see where the boys and Mr. Moundshroud end up after traversing all the stations of Halloween history.
Brief Synopsis of The Halloween Tree
The Halloween Tree tells the tale of a group of boys on Halloween night. They travel to an ancient, ostensibly haunted house on the edge of town and meet a man named Moundshroud who takes them on an adventure through the history of Halloween.
Chapter 16
Mr. Moundshroud and the boys watch as gargoyles and bests come out of the night to climb Notre Dame cathedral. They are in fact “sins” and Moundshroud explains: “Why those are Sins, boys! And
nondescripts. There crawls the Worm of Conscience!”
All of the “unnamed vices” and “ill-kept virtues” merge on the cathedral and the boys look on in wonder.
Chapter 17
Standing on the parapets of the cathedral, the boys watch the gargoyles, beasts, and creatures surround the cathedral. Yet, they wonder about Pipkin, and they think they spot him down in the throng of monsters. They rush down into into the belly of the cathedral and find a statue that looks exactly like Pipkin. They realize quickly that Pipkin’s voice is projected by the wind whistling through his stone mouth.
Through the wind and careful questioning, the boys discover that Pipkin is scattered through time. Part of him is “in a hospital a long way off home,” and some of him is still in the areas of the world the boys discovered with Mr. Moundshroud. Before he can tell them his whereabouts, a crack of lightning strikes the statue of Pipkin and destroys his face and sends the boys into frenzy.
Meanwhile, Moundshroud points them in the direction of Mexico where “a spirit smoke,” like a “bloom of gunpowder” moved in the right direction. They jump on their giant kite once again and head off into the night.
The boys fall into darkness: “Plummeting down through cold space, they felt the tail of a murderous peacock flourish beneath, all blood-filled eye. Ten thousand burning eyes came up” (Bradbury). On their way, they travel to Mexico for their last stop.
Chapter 18
In Mexico, above an island in the Gulf, Mr. Moundshroud and company watch El Dia de lost Muertos or “The Day of the Dead Ones” as Tom Skeleton says.
As our companions observe: “Far off on that dark island, there was a prickle of guitar sound. A single candle was lit in the graveyard. Somewhere someone blew a musical sound on a flute. Another candle was lit among the tombstones. Someone sang a single word of a song. A third candle was touched to life by a flaming match.”
The boys watch the celebration of the Day of the Dead and take note off all the people dressed as skeletons, and of the songs playing through the streets.
One such song reads: “See the skeletons juggling, standing high / On each other’s shoulders! / Preaching sermons, wrestling, playing soccer! / Little runners, little jumpers, / Little skeletons that leap about the fall / Did you ever dream that death could be / Whittled down so very small?” (Bradbury).
The boys find a “mound of white sugar skulls” and on the top they see one labeled Pipkin. Yet, they are taken aback because it does not come to life like the other faces before it, such as the gargoyle or the voices in Egyptian halls of Ancient Egypt. Seemingly, Pipkin was gone forever.
“The boys shivered. A cold wind blew fog up from the lake.”
Chapter 19
Searching for Pipkin, they see a man and woman in parade and the man carries a box, one that might hold Pipkin himself. Moundshroud tells them that to save Pipkin, they should look into the tree; and there they see “a dozen Halloween piñatas: devils, ghosts, skulls, witches” and all manner of frightful things dangling in the wind. The boys struck them and candy exploded in each direction, bringing the boys to a graveyard. There Moundshroud pulls a trap door and the boys enter a catacomb.
Bradbury tells us: “They went down the steps in single file and with each step down the dark got darker and with each step down the silence grew more silent and with each step down the night became deep as a well and very black indeed and with each step down the shadows waited and seemed to lean from walls and with each step down strange things seemed to smile at them from the long cave which waited below. … They felt lonely. They felt so alone they wanted to cry.”
They pass by rows of mummies who were put there after they could not rent their graves. The boys find Pipkin but are unable to reach him. So, they strike a bargain with Moundshroud by taking a piece of the white sugar-candy skull each and making a pact.
Each boy must give a year at the end of their life to save Pipkin.
Moundshroud states: “One year, each of you must promise to give. You won’t miss the year now, of course, for you are very young, and I see by touching your minds you cannot even guess the final situation. Only later, fifty years from this night, or sixty years from this dawn, when you are running low on time and dearly wish an extra day or so of fine weather and much joy, then’s when Mr. D for Doom or Mr. B for Bones will show up with his bill to be paid. Or perhaps I will come, old Moundshroud himself, a friend to lads, and say ‘deliver.’ So a year promised must be a year given over.”
The boys, ever courageous, decide that it is worth it to lose one year to save Pipkin–their best friend. From there they travel back to their hometown, back to Moundshroud’s house, and back to the Halloween Tree. In the course of this event, they are shown how all of it, the whole adventure, was one thing after all. Like a four-dimensional perspective, the boys realize that all of the Halloween activities are one. All of it a concentric circle influencing each other recursively throughout time: The Feast of Samhain, The time of the Dead Ones, All Souls and All Saints, The Day of the Dead, El Dia De Muerte, All Hallows, and finally Halloween.
“They died, oh Lord, they died!” shouts Moundshroud, “but came back in dreams. Those dreams were called Ghosts, and frightened men in every age–”
The boys rush to Pipkin’s house and discover that he had his appendix out just in time, before it killed him, and they celebrate with tears of joy and relief. Afterward, the boys all enter their own homes, closing Halloween night off to the world…all except for Tom Skelton, who “sends his thoughts” out into the air and asks about Moundshroud’s identity.
Mr. Moundshroud tells him, without saying it, that he is Death himself and politely (as politely as Death can) that he will see Tom again one day. Moundshroud blows out his own pumpkin on the top of his house and disappears into his home.
Bradbury states: “The wind came by. It rocked all the dark smoking pumpkins on the vast and beautiful Halloween Tree. The wind seized a thousand dark leaves and blew them away up over the sky and down over the earth toward the sun that must surely rise.”
Analysis
The ending of The Halloween Tree is an emotional one. Bradbury has a very exact way of ending his stories to pull your heartstrings. For example, at the end of Something Wicked this Way Comes, Bradbury writes: “Obediently, the City Hall clock, the Baptist church clock, the Methodist, the Episcopalian, the Catholic church, all the clocks, struck twelve. The Wind was seeded with time.”
Poetic. Nuanced. Beautiful.
Likewise, the imagery of Moundshroud blowing out a pumpkin with his face and then evaporating away into his home as if he was an ancient specter is a gorgeous finale to a book rife with pathos and appeals to our youth.
This is a book about death. Pipkin is dying and the boys must save him. Each Halloween festivity is marked by ghosts and spirits of the dead. Moundshroud himself is death incarnate. Death pervades each page with Bradbury’s descriptions.
Likewise, the boys in this story sacrifice a year of their life so that they can continue having a life with their friend. Surely, they must realize at some point that this year was taken from them, but they would be old and gray before the hand of Death came for them. Yet, they agreed to get closer to Death so that Pipkin is not youthful “remembrance,” but an extant child who can continue celebrating with them for years to come.
The Halloween Tree tells us to not fear the dark Halloween night, but to engage with it as a mode of symbols and meaning. We are to embrace it, rather than run from it in fear.
Works Cited:
Bradbury, Ray. “The Halloween Tree.” Random House, 1972.
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