I would like to introduce (or reintroduce, as the case may be) readers to the best science fiction writer I have ever encountered: Ray Bradbury. You may remember him as the author of works such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and, my personal favorite, The Martian Chronicles. If not, I pity you, wonder what you have spent your time reading, and I might even look at you as though you had just offered to read me a few pages from Danielle Steel’s latest “novel”. I would then rap you on the head with a rolled up newspaper, and confine you to the “naughty corner”. But I digress.
A few weeks ago, I picked up a Ray Bradbury novel I never knew existed, and I have been hoarding it on my shelf until this week as though it were the last Snicker’s bar. It is called The Halloween Tree (145 pages, $5.50), and it is a book intended for young adults. I did not know this when I picked it up. First of all, I did not know Bradbury ever wrote anything for young adults. Second, I got it out of the science fiction section. The books for teenagers are on the other side of the store together with the Twilight paraphernalia, which I sprint past with haste lest sparkly vampires attempt to make me read any of the series. Again, I digress.
The point is, none of you should immediately run to your local bookstore (as you do after reading any of my reviews, right?) to buy a copy of The Halloween Tree, and then curse me for writing a review of a novel for adolescents. No cursing is needed because Bradbury is a brilliant writer with universal appeal. He is a writer that seems to completely immerse himself in his words; he plays with them as if utilizing them effectively was the easiest thing in the world. He is a master at weaving exquisite sentences that employ every sense without being crowded or pretentious, and you will never regret reading one of his works.
In The Halloween Tree, eight boys set out on Halloween night to save their friend, who has been kidnapped. The boys must travel through time to retrieve their friend with the help of Moundshroud, a tall, evil-looking man living in the neighborhood haunted house who promises them “No treats…Only- trick!” (21). The boys visit the time of the ancient Egyptians, the druids, the Romans, and on and on searching for their friend, Pipkin. In every time, they see traditions, rituals, and myths built around death. Bradbury explores traditions from other cultures and times to get to the heart of Halloween as it exists today. In the process of doing so, he introduces death as an all-powerful source of religion and culture. It's not a new storyline, but what is? Bradbury takes it apart and makes it new like a pro.
I particularly enjoyed the presentation of death as a beginning, not an end. The ancient Egyptians, for example, buried their dead with everything he or she could possibly need in the afterlife. The concept of an afterlife in itself implies a new beginning; we shed the material in favor of the spiritual. We don't know for sure whether or not the afterlife exists, and, unfortunately, it's one of those things that you just don't know until you get there. Even then, it's not like you can come back and reassure the rest of us. Bradbury notes how much of faith is due to the omnipresence of death, and I must confess that I had never thought of it quite that way before. I think it might be something we are all vaguely aware of, but Bradbury takes the idea and uses The Halloween Tree as a frame. He does so without judgement; he merely places it before his readers for their own perusal, and moves on. How to judge something like that about ourselves? Is it really wrong that some of our core beliefs involve death?Or was Novalis right in his Hymns to the Night when he said that our obsession with death limits our own lives? According to Bradbury, striving to be more self-aware and to understand our motivations is enough. It might have to be.
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