How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Dad winked at Will. Will winked back. They stood now, a boy with corn-colored hair and a man with moon-white hair, a boy with a summer-apple, a man with a winter-apple face. Dad, Dad, thought Will, why, why, he looks…like me in a smashed mirror! (2.33)
This is a precursor to the age issues that will haunt Charles – and the boys, for that matter – throughout the novel.
Quote #2
The little girl wept, feeling them near, but not looking up yet.
"…me…me…help me…nobody'll help me…me…me…I don't like this…" (32.50)
Has both mind and body been transformed here? Or just body?
Quote #3
For the Dwarf was looking down.
And in his eyes were the lost bits and fitful pieces of a man named Fury who had sold lightning rods how many days how many years ago in the long, the easy, the safe and wondrous time before this fright was born. (35.24-25)
Here we get a reminder that, before their transformations, the circus freaks used to be normal people, like Will or Jim or Charles. This complicates our reading of the novel because it plays with our sympathies.
Quote #4
[Charles Halloway]: "Bless you, Jim. Bless you, Will."
The small father who was very tall now walked slowly away. (35.216-7)
It's interesting that he is described both as a "small father" and as "very tall." How can he be both of these things at once?
Quote #5
"I know Dad's in there, but is it Dad? I mean, what if they came, changed him, made him bad, promised him something they can't give but he thinks they can." (38.7)
Ah, good point – how is identity crafted in a novel where extreme transformations are altering how people look, think, and feel?
Quote #6
"If you're a miserable sinner in one shape, you're a miserable sinner in another. Changing size doesn't change the brain. If I made you twenty-five tomorrow, Jim, your thoughts would still be boy thoughts, and it'd show!" (40.15)
Is Charles right in describing the nature of the transformations driven by the carousel? Or the other transformations the carnival induces? How much is changed when a person becomes a "freak"?
Quote #7
"If I became young again, all my friends would still be fifty, sixty, wouldn't they? I'd be cut off from them, forever, for I couldn't tell them what I'd up and done, could they? They'd resent it. They'd hate me. Their interests would no longer be mine, would they? Especially their worries. Sickness and death for them, new life for me. So where's the place in this world for a man who looks twenty but who is older than Methuselah, what man could stand the shock of a change like that? Carnival won't warn you it's equal to postoperative shock, but, by God, I bet it is, and more!"
[Charles Halloway]: "So what happens? You get your reward: madness." (40.17-40.18)
Indeed, many of the characters do seem to lose part of their minds when transformed by the carnival. Miss Foley, for example, seems to have lost her sanity when the boys find her as a little girl.
Quote #8
[Charles Halloway]: "The Fat Man, what was he once? If I can guess the carnival's sense of irony, the way they like to weight the scales, he was once a ravener after all kinds and varieties of lust. No matter, there he lives now, anyway, collected up in his bursting skin. The Thin Man, Skeleton, or what, did he starve his wife's, children's spiritual as well as physical hungers? The Dwarf? Was he or was he not your friend, the lightning-rod salesman, always on the road, never settling, ever-moving, facing no encounters, running ahead of the lightning and selling rods, yes, but leaving others to face the storm, so maybe […]" (40.22)
This passage suggests that the punishment fits the crime when it comes to the transformations brought on by the carnival. But is this really the case? Do people, in some ways, deserve what they get?
Quote #9
But the name had tumbled from his mouth only because he heard the calliope summing the golden years ahead, felt Jim isolate somewhere, pulled by warm gravities, swung by sunrise notes, wondering what it could be like to stand sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years tall, and then, oh then, nineteen and, most incredible! – twenty! The great wind of time blew in the brass pipes, a fine, a jolly, a summer tune, promising everything and even Will, hearing, began to run toward the music that grew up like a peach tree full of sun-ripe fruit – (51.25)
Even Will has a moment of wanting to grow older. If Will, the supposed "all good" character, can have such a moment, we think it's reasonable that other characters who are markedly "good" or "bad" might have other characteristics as well.
Quote #10
One more ride and one more ride. And, after awhile, you'd offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally…
The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment. …finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keep of the freaks…proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows…
Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here. (54.31-54.34)
The fact that the victims of the carnival become its proprietors is significant. It reminds us that Mr. Dark feeds on the inherent evil inside people. He's not making people evil, rather drawing out of them the darkness that is already there.