“They blinked. They ran. They scratched with their fingernails. They plucked with their hands. They tore off strips, patches, and huge rolls of animal flesh, fangs, piercing eyes, wounded flanks, blood-red claws, tails, bound creatures, and leaping cries. The whole side of the barn resembled an ancient parade brought to a sudden halt. They tore it asunder.” — Ray Bradbury | The Halloween Tree
Today, we continue reading Ray Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree.” In these next few chapters, our group of children, best friends, ventures away from the ostentatious ghoul Moundshroud’s house and into the past.
The boys, including the sickly Pipkin, begin their voyage into the history of Halloween, where they witness and learn about some truly spooky myths and folklore.
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 6:
At the beginning of this chapter, Pipkin chases after the boys toward Moundshroud’s house. He calls out, “I don’t feel well. I can’t run.” His frailty in the night concerns his friends.
“Bats flew,” Bradbury writes. “Owls shrieked. Night ravens clustered like black leaves in trees.” And still, the “small figure” of Pipkin makes its way through the darkness until a large beast flies through the night and scoops him up. Pipkin’s disappearance causes Moundshroud to show concern and implores the boys to join him in the adventure to the past.
As the boys deliberate, they all “thought of All Hallow’s Night and the billion ghosts awandering the lonely lanes in cold winds and strange smoke” (Bradbury). Of course, they agree and run to an old barn in Moundshroud’s neck of the woods, where they are told to “Build a kite. Quick!”
Chapter 7:
Continuing, the boys begin pulling at the barn’s ancient paint and wallpaper and assemble a massive kite that could potentially pull them all into the night.
“And with each tear, they pulled off talons, tongues, or ravening feline eyes,” states Bradbury. The boys reveal more and more animals and theatrics that were once a brand-new tapestry on the barn. “Beneath awaited layer upon layer of jungle nightmare… A thousand animals in congregation rumbled to be set free. Now free in fists and hands and fingers, whistling on the autumn wind, the boys raced off across the grass” (Bradbury).
The boys, after listening to Moundshroud’s directives, begin to run the kite through the yard with an old clothesline and finally take flight. Upon realizing that the kite is absent a tail, Tom clings to the bottom of it and hangs on, acting as its aerial rudder. In their excitement, the boys all climb onto the kite, and it begins to sail away. Moundshroud, attempting to catch up, seizes the kite and “very simply, takes off, and soars.”
Chapter 8:
The boys all “yell with delight” as they soar through the night and “brush down over ancient trees.” Over their neighborhood, they fly and “then down they sail off away deep into the Undiscovered Country of Old Death and Strange Years in the Frightful Past…” (Bradbury).
They eventually end up in Egypt, near the Nile, and find the pyramids are not ancient relics as they are now, but are freshly cut. “The Sphinx, with its great lion paws treaded out on the golden sands of the desert, was sharp-cut and freshly born out of the womb of stone mountains. It was a vast pup in the bright and empty glare of noon. If the sun had fallen and lay between its paws, it would have cuffed it like a fireball toy” (Bradbury). Likewise, the pyramids were “new-cut stone.”
They flew down on the kite and landed but were completely alone. Moundshroud had disappeared, but all of the Egyptian amenities were there as if plucked from a pulp novel. The soft sand, the Valley of the Kings, and in the darkness, their imaginations ran wild with mummies and ancient bandages flagging in the acrid air of a tomb.
Chapter 9:
After waiting a moment, the boys are beckoned into the darkness of the pyramid with an unraveled bandage. “Watch for murder, boys! Murder!” cried Moundshroud to them from the darkness. They pass pillars of seasonal cycles and the remembrance of each old season with a festival.
Suddenly, they stop, “For they had come to a vast hole in the underground cavern, and through this hole, they could look out at an Egyptian village where, at dusk, food was being placed out in pottery…” Here, the boys witness a festival of sorts, as the Egyptians lay out warm food for wandering spirits. And, the shadows appear and take the food from teh porches.
Moreover, they peer into a home and see a “grandfather mummy” fetched from a closet space and placed “at the head of the table, with food set before him.” The family members, meanwhile, toast the man’s life and his remembrance. The boys learn that there is a strict adherence to the dead. Paying respect to them anyway is extremely important.
Chapter 10:
Afterward, the boys venture away and to a room where they encounter Moundshroud, but he is dressed as a mummy. “One eye was glued shut with spiderweb,” while the other “cracked forth tears of dust and a glint of bright blue glass” (Bradbury). After asking which boy was dressed like a mummy, Ralph piped up and then had the honors of freeing Moundshroud from his entombed predicament.
Soon after, the boys must hide as a funeral procession comes by, and to their horror, it is their friend Pipkin being entombed in the pyramid. Moundshroud makes the boys stay quiet and waits for the procession to disappear. Yet, he promises to help find Pipkin elsewhere.
With that said, Moundshroud points to the darkness where a horrible lightning storm is raging and a terrible battle between saber-toothed tigers and cavemen is coming to a close. There was a horrific fire burning, and the cavemen used burning stakes to attack the tigers, and at last, they seemed unassailed if only for a while.
Moundshroud addresses the boys’ confusion at this sight and its relation to Halloween. In his response, he delivers some of my favorite lines replete with indignation, sadness, and violence. He states: “Only by night fires was the caveman, beastman, able at last to turn his thoughts on a spit and baste them with wonder. The sun died in the sky. Winter came on like a great white beast shaking its fur, burying him. Would spring ever come back to the world? Would the sun be reborn next year or stay murdered? Egyptians asked it. Cavemen asked it a million years before. Will the sun rise tomorrow morning?” (Bradbury).
Moundshroud further explains that the cavemen, much like the Egyptians, “remembered their own dead of the last year.” He states that, “Ghosts called in
their heads” but the ghosts were memories yet the apemen were oblivious to this fact…so they could never send them away. They could only pray for the sun to return.
Analysis:
Moundshroud’s role as a guide becomes clear in these chapters as he whisks the boys off onto a marvelous adventure into the past, which reveals the history of Halloween. The boys venture between both Egyptian celebration and ape-man (caveman) exploits as they battle sabretooth tigers.
We also have a subplot featuring Pipkin (the greatest boy ever), who is quite pallid and meek in the story due to sickness. His role as victim pushes the other boys to the forefront of the story to be heroes in their own right. Their bond, too, is strong as they are doing what they can to rescue him from captivity.
Meanwhile, we have the thematic building block of death becoming clearer as well, as both the Egyptian society and the ancient cavemen fear what they do not understand, but still carry great reverence for the nighttime (and those who have passed). Pipkin, weak and unable to be himself, seems almost deathly in his own way, and his lack of jubilance is suspect, as the boys only know him to vibrant and full of charisma. Death, in this instance, attaches itself to the boys’ friend and their understanding of the world.
Works Cited:
Bradbury, Ray. “The Halloween Tree.” Random House, 1972.
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