50 pages • 1 hour read
Shea ErnshawLong Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Figurative Language
One of the features frequently noted by readers and critics is the author’s use of language. Sally’s inner monologue is full of macabre imagery, reflecting her having spent most of her life in Halloween Town. Those images don’t necessarily have a negative connotation in Sally’s mind. For example, “[T]he doubt churning in my stomach feels like tomb beetles tunneling through a corpse in the graveyard” (28-29). The analogy undoubtedly has a negative connotation for the reader, but the image may seem perfectly ordinary to Sally.
The creepy death imagery is sometimes even beautiful, e.g., “The doorway smells of lavender, of freshly brewed chamomile tea, and my doll eyes flutter, suddenly heavy, like silver coins placed on the eyelids of the dead” (47). “Dead” seems soothing and restful when it is preceded by “lavender,” “chamomile,” and “silver.”
On the other hand, when Sally arrives in Valentine Town, she describes Queen Ruby as having skin of “a soft pinkish hue, as if she’s been eating too many rose petals and it has begun to change the color of her flesh” (19) and adds that she seems “abloom with confidence” (20). Sally uses flowers to represent Queen Ruby—youthful alive and soft, unlike Sally’s dead dry and brown leaves. The figurative language reflects Sally’s observation of material reality and her feelings in reaction to that reality.
First Person Present-Tense
The story is told in the first-person present tense, meaning that the protagonist narrates the story as the events occur; there's the sense that the narrator, Sally, has no opportunity to mentally edit her experience. Consequently, Sally appears more likely to be a reliable narrator, having enough insight into herself and others to give the reader a complete picture of what is happening. The advantage of the reliable narrator is that it frees the reader to concentrate on Sally’s transformation into adulthood and her exploration of the holiday worlds.
Foreshadowing
The author uses foreshadowing to alert the reader to future disasters and reversals of Sally’s expectations. Foreshadowing sometimes takes the form of dramatic irony, as when Sally says, “[Jack will] set things right. He’ll weave his fingers through mine and promise that nothing will have to change. Ever” (8-9). Jack, of course, cannot promise anything of the kind. Also, according to the unspoken rules of stories, any time a character says that something will never happen, it is immediately guaranteed that it must happen.
A more subtle foreshadowing occurs when Jack assures Sally that there will be no need to poison or put anyone into a deathly sleep outside of Halloween Town. Sally can’t imagine a world so safe that she doesn’t need to arm herself with potions. Later, she will find herself cut off from Halloween Town in desperate need of a potion to put the Sandman to sleep. Symbolically, because of who she is, Sally will always need to keep her weapons/tools close by, just as she will always need to hold her hard-won identity close.
One of the most important instances of foreshadowing occurs when the Sandman blows his sand over Sally, and she doesn’t fall asleep. The reader can easily conclude that not only is there something different about Sally but that her difference must relate to the Sandman in some way.
