39 pages • 1 hour read
Ray BradburyThe Halloween Tree
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Pipkin tries to run toward the other boys, but he is weak and falls, the light of the jack-o’-lantern he is holding going out. He is enveloped by darkness and calls for help. When the clouds clear, Pipkin is gone. Moundshroud says he fears that Death has “borrowed” Pipkin and is holding him for ransom. He asks the boys if they would like to go on a journey to rescue Pipkin as well as solve the mystery of Halloween, thus “solv[ing] two mysteries-in-one” (39). The boys unanimously answer “yes.”
Beginning their journey, they come upon an abandoned barn covered with old circus posters and banners depicting various wild animals. Moundshroud instructs the boys to use the posters and a fence railing to construct a kite.
Chapter 7 Summary
Working quickly, the boys and Moundshroud finish the kite, which Tom and Moundshroud observe resembles a pterodactyl. Using a clothesline, Moundshroud hoists the kite in the air. The boys and Moundshroud grab onto the end of the kite to act as its tail, and they sail away into the night sky.
Chapter 8 Summary
As they fly along, the boys ask Moundshroud where they are going. Moundshroud answers that they are going back in time, 2,000 years before Christ. He can sense that Pipkin is waiting for them.
The moon rapidly flickers, and the landscape changes to that of ancient Egypt. The kite alights on a tomb cave in a small cliff in the Valley of the Kings, and the boys land safely in the sand. Moundshroud enters the cave, and the boys follow.
Chapter 9 Summary
The boys follow a strip of mummy cloth deep down into the tomb. As they run, the sun alternately dies and is reborn, reminding Tom of the anxiety he feels when the sun sets at night or in midwinter. They realize they are experiencing the presence of Osiris, the Egyptian sun god.
Speaking to them from deep within the tomb, Moundshroud enunciates “Lesson Number One about Halloween” (53). In ancient Egyptian belief, the sun god Osiris was murdered each night by his brother, Darkness. This points to the fact that every culture has its “death festival, having to do with seasons,” often involving “skulls and bones […] skeletons and ghosts” (53).
The boys come to a “vast hole.” Here they see an Egyptian village where citizens place food on dishes as “treats” for the dead. A song rises from the Egyptians asking the “sweet dead” to “come home.” The shadows (ghosts) encircle the warm food. Inside one house, the boys see the ghost of a grandfather sitting at the head of a family table to share an evening meal.
Chapter 10 Summary
Moundshroud calls to the boys from within the tomb, and they run to find him. To their surprise, they discover Moundshroud in the guise of a mummy propped inside a niche. Moundshroud tells Ralph, the boy dressed as a mummy, to unwrap him, and he does so.
At that moment, a funeral procession comes by bearing a child-shaped mummy. To their dismay, the boys realize it is Pipkin. Pipkin calls that he is trapped under the wrappings and begins to tell them where to meet him, but he is cut off. The mourners place Pipkin in a sarcophagus along with toys and food to use in the Land of the Dead.
Moundshroud reassures the boys that they can still save Pipkin. He delivers a lesson about the meaning of mummies and Halloween. The Egyptians dressed their dead in wrappings because they expected them to rise out of the tomb to a new life. Because the Egyptians were consciously aware of death and the need to prepare for it, “Every day was Halloween” for them (60).
Suddenly, an electrical storm throws light on the cave walls, and on them are prehistoric drawings. The drawings depict cavemen benefiting from fire, which banished humanity’s fear of the night and created the conditions for civilization and religion to flourish. Moundshroud explains that Halloween was born of asking the question, “Will the sun rise tomorrow morning?” (62). On the threshold of winter, prehistoric people remembered the good things of life that were dying and asked themselves whether the spring and the light would return.
Moundshroud and the boys walk out of the cavern, and Moundshroud invites them to climb a pyramid.
Chapter 11 Summary
The boys reach the top of the pyramid and find a “crystal lens” on a golden tripod. Looking through it, the boys see scenes from the death-related customs of ancient Greece and Rome.
Moundshroud sings an incantation, and the wind causes him to explode in a flurry of autumn leaves. The leaves fall on the boys and carry them into the air, away from Egypt and toward the British Isles. During their flight, Moundshroud wishes them a Happy New Year, reminding them that Halloween at one time marked the beginning of the year. The boys gently land on earth in Britain during Druid times.
Chapters 6-11 Analysis
The introduction of Moundshroud solidifies the novel’s message of The Need to Recognize Mortality. Moundshroud is associated with death imagery from the start. His face is skull-like; he first appears as a “white face” with “sockets” for eyes. His voice is “sepulchral,” or tomb-like. Even his name evokes the connection; a “shroud” is a length of fabric used to wrap a corpse, while a “mound” suggests a burial mound. At the same time, Moundshroud is not a wholly threatening figure. His appearance scares the boys, but he also serves as their guide and teacher on a journey to rescue their friend. He thus embodies the duality of death, which is both familiar and frightening.
Chapter 6 establishes the journey’s high stakes when the boys witness Pipkin dramatically being “snatched away” by some unseen force. Pipkin’s “danger” functions on both a literal and a fantasy level. The real-world reason for Pipkin’s brush with death is not revealed until the end of the book. In the fantasy world that the boys enter, however, death is holding Pipkin for a ransom, and this “captivity” sets up the sacrifice that the boys will have to pay in the last chapter. Meanwhile, the boys’ eagerness to help Pipkin continues to develop The Power of Friendship.
When Pipkin disappears, the light of his pumpkin is extinguished, and everything is plunged into darkness; this moment symbolizes that Pipkin is in danger of death and underscores the symbolic connection of light (especially fire) to life. This symbolism becomes explicit as the boy’s journey begins. For example, Moundshroud argues that fire was important to prehistoric humans as much for what it represented as for what it did, as it gave them hope that night—death—would not last forever. Likewise, Moundshroud stresses that the Egyptians worshiped the sun and that its disappearance through the months of winter caused anxiety, ultimately contributing to the development of Halloween.
The novel thus depicts ancient Egypt as the first civilization to create ceremonies surrounding certain universal human concerns. In this sense, it represents the origin of certain Halloween customs and traditions, and it is accordingly placed first in the boys’ journey. Among the elements that influenced later Halloween customs are the location of a festival at the beginning of winter, the emphasis on light and darkness, and the bearing of food and other material items for the use of the dead in the afterlife. These familiar elements underscore The Difference but Connectedness of Cultural Traditions.
However, the most important lesson the boys learn from their time in ancient Egypt is that “[e]very day was Halloween” for the Egyptians (60). This drives home The Need to Recognize Mortality, an awareness that the Halloween holiday fosters. Mummies, representing the Egyptian method of burying the dead by wrapping them in strips of cloth, become a potent symbol of death and reappear in later sections. Significantly, however, one of the boys has dressed as a mummy for Halloween, implying that death has been with them all along.
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