The Halloween Tree

The Halloween Tree is the central symbol and image of the book. Located beside Moundshroud’s house, it is a tree hung with jack-o’-lanterns (carved and lit pumpkins) representing individual human faces. The Halloween Tree comes to symbolize the spirit of Halloween and especially The Need to Recognize Mortality.

More specifically, the Halloween Tree embodies the paradoxes that the novel locates at the heart of Halloween. Like the candles the boys see throughout their journey, it is lit in defiance of the night’s darkness and oncoming winter. This is a point the imagery in Moundshroud’s song emphasizes:

The leaves have turned to gold and red,

The grass is brown, the old year dead,

But hang the harvest high, Oh see!

The candle constellations on the Halloween Tree” (24).

Other elements of the tree are more unnerving. The faces carved in the pumpkins, for example, “smile […] hideously” and resemble various archetypal monsters—a witch, a mummy, etc. Besides corresponding to Halloween stock figures, the jack-o’-lanterns symbolize humanity’s fears, which boil down to a fear of death. The mingled hope and fear that the tree represents echo the novel’s message about death and foreshadow other similar juxtapositions (e.g., the gargoyles on Notre Dame), underscoring The Difference but Connectedness of Cultural Tradition.