The Best Halloween Ever

Candy is both an important motif and symbol in the novel, and also emerges as a key plot point. As a motif, it illustrates the important themes of The Enduring Appeal of Halloween and Finding Joy in the Unexpected. Early on, Beth declares that the whole point of Halloween for children is to eat so much candy that they get sick. When the grown-ups cancel trick-or-treating and candy starts disappearing from supermarket shelves, the children are devastated. Beth notes that even though the Herdmans take away the children’s candy every year, at least the children had the thrill of obtaining the candy in the first place. This year that thrill appears to be eradicated. The unexpected reveal of the mountain of candy in the boiler room shows that the spirit of childhood and Halloween can never be suppressed.

The different attitudes of grown-ups and children toward candy show how intrinsically linked sweets are with innocence and indulgence. For Beth’s mother, too much candy represents excess and health concerns, but for Beth and Charlie it represents pure joy—a joy that is only loosely related to consumption. The joy that candy symbolizes is revealed in the scene where Beth discovers the boiler room: She enthusiastically lists all the variants of candy stacked in the space.