Summary and Analysis
Part II:
Chapter 26
Will and Jim, afraid that the police will never believe them if they tell what they know of the Carnival and its works, lie about their names and addresses. Consequently, the police drop them off at strange, dark houses near the police station. The boys view the station's lights as making it "sun-colored," even at midnight.
Of note here is Bradbury's sun imagery, further substantiating his idea that dark is evil and that light is good. The boys' fear of the impossibility of convincing the police of the truth of their adventure with the nephew and the Carnival is characterized in Jim's watching the police station's lights as if at any moment he expects the station and the goodness and truth it represents to be cast into total darkness forever.
Later, seeing Miss Foley and Mr. Halloway with the police in the station destroys the boys' last hopes of anyone's ever believing them. Knowing they have no alternative, they turn themselves in. At this same time, we sense Jim's dissatisfaction with himself. He is a thirteen-year-old boy who yearns to be twenty. The carousel could have made his dream a reality, but, as Jim bitterly puts it, Will wrecked the carousel's motor and ruined the possibility of his dream coming true.