From the Dust Returned External Continuity

*SPOILERS*

There is so much to talk about.

To start with, A Thousand Times Great Grandmère is often called the Dust Witch. Maybe Timothy should think twice about listening to her...

Okay, maybe it's not a big deal. Obviously she's not Madamoiselle Tarot or the time travelling tattoo artist. Moving on...

In "Make Haste to Live" the character of Angelina Marguerite is a Time Lady. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. The evidence is that she is unfathomably old, she gets younger-looking all the time, and at one point is called a "daughter of time".


Okay, okay, I know it's not true, but give me this one, will you? I need it. It distracts me from remembering Miss Marguerite in an 18-year-old body coming onto 10-year-old Timothy! And after she learns his age and that he doesn't know what she's talking about, she still kisses him passionately, twice!! It's probably the most uncomfortable conversation in all of Bradbury's work...
I'm going to avoid that for the rest of this post and hopefully forget it by the time I'm done.

Here's something that's not so goosebump-inducing: a description of how old Great Grandmère is says she is two thousand years older than Christ, including mention of the empty tomb, possibly implying that the Resurrection is indeed true. In Christianity, Christ is said to have conquered death when he arose, and at one point the Bible says the dead came up from their graves and walked around for a time!

It is entirely possible that this is the event that made all the ancient undead return to life, and allowed new folks to join the Family's ranks. It also fits nicely with "The Man", if Christ is the Savior in this universe. Perhaps this event occurred so as to give many a second chance at life, to help make the world better. Of course, many embraced evil (e.g. vampires, werewolves, John the Unjust, Dark's Carnival--I'll explain in a moment).  But the Family seems generally nice.

Now, the reason I included Dark and his Carnival on that list and have implied a connection with both The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes is because the Family's House is located outside Green Town, where Something Wicked takes place. In "The Wandering Witch" Cecy is in another girl's mind when she falls in love with a man, whom she proceeds to tell to look her up if he's ever in Green Town. In addition to this, at one point, a ravine and creek are mentioned, as are men playing chess in the courtyard square (references to Dandelion Wine and Farewell Summer, which I'll get to eventually). Three a.m., the soul's midnight, is mentioned. Another nice callback to Something Wicked is when John the Unjust is in the town and sees the Indian outside the cigar store.

I would place this book in the 1940s, most likely around the time the stories were begun (1945). I have my reasons. Like I said, it makes sense it would take place in the time it was written, as there is no technology advanced beyond that point. The stories came about in response to McCarthyism. The Family mentions that wars have ravaged Europe, and have shattered their belief in the superstitions they need to stay alive. These wars would logically be the World Wars, the second ending in...1945.

So on the timeline, it would be placed between "The Fox and the Forest" and the Frame Story of The Illustrated Man.

Now that I've established a link between this book and Something Wicked, I will propose my theory regarding connections between that book and this one.

The members of the carnival are called by Will's father the "autumn people". They have to do with death. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave.

In From the Dust Returned, the Family are referred to as the "October people". They, too, have associations with death. Where do they come from? The grave (being undead). Where do they go? The dust (there is a chapter called "Return to the Dust"; try as they might, there's no getting around the fact that they're fading away).

These descriptions, as well as the location of the story, mean that the similarites are intentional. In the one book, the Carnival lives off the fear and pain of others; in the other, the Family generally keep to themselves and even encourage Timothy, the only normal one among them, to live a great life, rather than being like them.

Basically, the Family are in many ways the exact opposite of the Carnival (aside from the death thing, obviously).

As mentioned above, there are evil ones among them, including John the Unjust. He killed many people. Dark and his carnival are just as evil and bring their victims a different kind of death. All these things seem to point to Mr. Cooger and Mr. Dark and the carnival freaks being members of the Family. Yes, I know the freaks were normal people changed by them. But if normal people can become members of the Family naturally (all of them were once regular people--even Grandmère was a pharaoh's daughter; Minerva Halliday in "On the Orient North" died and became a ghost), then they can theoretically be made to become that way, if Dark knows how.

But why would the Carnival do what they did?

Like I said, they embraced evil. But, in From the Dust Returned, the Family is in danger because people aren't believing as much anymore. They say that to survive they need to scare people just enough that they'll believe.  Maybe Dark and his followers were trying desperately to keep the fear alive so they would not be destroyed. Clearly that didn't work out so well for them.

Now, at the end of From the Dust Returned, the police are told about the family (John the Unjust calls them "wicked") and a mob from the town end up driving the Family out and burning their House. Why would everyone so readily believe without proof? Why would they attack the Family before they knew their intentions? Grandmère suggests to Timothy that they are jealous of the Family's long life. And they are afraid of their knowledge of death.

I submit there is more to it than that: these people remember what Dark and his Carnival did 15 years before [EDIT: 3 years before]. They remember and they are dead set on making sure nothing like that ever happens again. They intend to protect the townsfolk this time. To be sure, the Family in this book have done nothing wrong, living peacably on the outskirts of town, but the mob doesn't know that, or doesn't take it into account; they want to be sure no autumn people harm them again, and the October people are too close for comfort.

This leads into another point--the Family have been there for countless years. More than 15 years ago, certainly. Where were they when Dark and his carnival came to town? Why did they do nothing to help? Surely they knew. Dark's Shadow Show made numerous visits in the past, and Cecy's mind is able to stretch out and be aware of what's going on in the world. So, why didn't they help?

I say they did. Or, at least Cecy did. In From the Dust Returned, Cecy is shown to be able to not only enter others' minds, but also, to some extent, control their actions and speech. There are several times in Something Wicked when characters do or say things and they don't know why. Many examples involve Will's father. In the library, when he tells the boys about his research and suspicions, things come off his tongue as if he had a prepared speech and knew exactly what he was talking about, but he didn't completely know if he was saying everything he meant to. Later, when he volunteers for the bullet trick and everything that follows, multiple times he thinks about the fact that he has no idea what he's doing or why. He just is.

I think that Cecy is helping the principal characters, especially Will's father, to defeat the evil members of the Family. Indeed, as a result, Charles Halloway has a changed outlook on life and is much happier for it. In From the Dust Returned, Cecy says that whenever she enters another person's body, she doesn't want to leave until she's improved their lives somehow. We see this when she attempts to get Ann and Tom to fall in love. She fails with the woman in California, who kills herself anyway. But with Charles, she succeeded with flying colors.

I made a brief connection with The Illustrated Man before, and now I will make another. Just as the Family in this book is fading due to lack of belief, the fictional creatures and the ghosts of their authors in "The Exiles" are clinging to existence on Mars. They seem to be the last. When the crew of the ship arrives, and burns the last remaining copies of the books, the last remaining triggers for people believing and fearing, the eponymous exiles cease to exist. They may have been the final remaining siblings of the weird and undead Family.

Thus is my theory written, I think there is plenty of evidence to support it.

And, good news! I forgot about that thing above by the end of this post after all.

Oh, no. I just remembered what I remembered I'd forgotten...

Next Time: I embark on a quest to find a Theory of Everything (regarding Star Wars, anyway)