Something Wicked This Way Comes Hopes, Fears, Childhood, and Humanity: Background Info on Ray Bradbury and His Writings (info drawn from http://illinoisissues.uis.edu/archives/2011/12/bradbury.html) Something Wicked This Way Comes

Author Information Writers’s Name: Ray Bradbury Born: August 22, 1920 Birthplace: Waukegan, IL Died: June 5, 2012 Deathplace: Los Angeles, California Wrote: short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, and verse

During childhood and adolescence lived in Waukegan, IL Waukegan would inspire setting of first work The Night (wrote at age 17) and later works set in fictional Greentown, IL (setting of Something Wicked this Way Comes)

Physical form of the ravine surround childhood home in Waukegan became reoccurring image in his work: biographer Eller explains “As he [Bradbury] matured, the ravine continued to fascinate him as a borderland between where town and nature struggled to control the landscape—an ambiguous borderland between the rational and irrational, life and death” (Dunn)

Did not attend college Bradbury once said: “‘Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression, and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years’” (Dunn)

Libraries ignited Bradbury’s belief that authorship created possibility of immortality; he saw books as personified versions of authors, and libraries the beloved meeting place of his literary loves

Childhood, Carnivals, Immortality, and Writing Bradbury views childhood memories and stories grounded childhood as a means for him to express universal feelings/experiences, especially the following: Loss of innocence Growing knowledge of mortality/fear of death Feelings of isolation from others Human need of love and acceptance

As Bradbury’s biographer Eller summarizes so succinctly and eloquently of Bradbury’s view on childhood, “‘The fundamental hopes and fears that make us human are the closest to childhood”

Selected Quotes from the Preface to Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing

On Childhood “Where did I find the courage to rebel, change my life, live alone? I don’t want to over-estimate all this, but damn it, I love that nine-year old, whoever in hell he was. Without him, I could not have survived to introduce these essays.” (XI)

“So I collected comics, fell in love with carnivals and World’s Fairs and began to write.” (XII)

On the Question “What Does Writing Teach Us?” “First and foremost, it [writing] reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right” (XII) – “While our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.” (XII)

“Secondly, writing is survival “Secondly, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that. Not to write, for many of us, is to die.” (XII) – “We must take arms each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory.” (XII-XIII)

“For writing allows just the proper recipes of truth, life, reality as you are able to eat, drink, and digest without hyperventilating and flopping like a dead fish in your bed” (XIII)