50 pages • 1 hour read
Shea ErnshawA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Sally faints and wakes up in a room that feels strange yet familiar. Her mother, Greta, and her father, Albert, are the governors of Dream Town. They tell her that when she was 12 years old, she was kidnapped by a pale man with a large head, who snatched her from her room and ran away with her. That must have been Doctor Finkelstein. They tried to follow, but the doors into the other worlds had been blocked from the other side.
They tell her a little bit about her life before she was taken. Sally doesn’t remember any of it, yet it feels familiar. She realizes she is a real person, a loved child. Her parents want to show her around Dream Town, making up for all the lost time they never had with her. The mention of time reminds Sally of how little she has. The people of Halloween Town and all the other holiday worlds are still sleeping. She tells her parents what is happened and begs them to help her find a way to stop the Sandman. Her parents tell her it is not that simple. They offer to show her the town so that she may be able to understand.
Her parents show Sally around the town. The role of Dream Town is to help people sleep. They herd counting sheep and study things like sleepwalking. They take her to the dream sand factory, which they must protect from the Sandman. That’s the purpose of the wall that surrounds the town. They built it to keep the Sandman out.
Finally, they bring her to the lullaby library, where the poets write songs and poems to lull the children of the real world to sleep. Here, they tell her that the Sandman was once the king of Dream Town, but he was never the kindly old man he was depicted as in fairy tales. He didn’t put people to sleep out of kindness. He did it to steal their dreams. Children never used to have many dreams because the Sandman stole them. He forced the people of Dream Town to work day and night, manufacturing dream sand and writing lullabies to put children to sleep so the Sandman could steal more dreams.
After centuries, the people of Dream Town banded together. One day, when the Sandman went out to steal dreams, they built an enormous wall around the town and locked the Sandman out. Ever since, he has roamed the woods outside the town, trying to get back in. Then Sally opened the door that Doctor Finkelstein had blocked from the outside and let the Sandman out into the other worlds. Sally asks if the Sandman can’t put the farmers to sleep when they’re out harvesting lavender and steel in their dreams, but it turns out the residents of Dream Town are immune to dream sand. Sally remembers the Sandman blowing sand over her through the window, but she didn’t fall asleep. For the first time, she believes Dream Town is the world she was born in.
She begs her parents to help her recapture the Sandman before he gets into the real world and puts everyone to sleep there. Her parents tell Sally they have already made up their minds about what needs to be done. They must seize the opportunity to close the doors from the other worlds so that the Sandman can never get back in, but if they do, Sally can never go back to Halloween Town.
Sally protests; locking the Sandman out won’t solve anything. Everyone in the other holiday worlds will still be asleep. Her parents tell her what’s done is done; Sally opened the door and let the Sandman into her world. The people he has put to sleep can never be awakened. All the people of Dream Town can do is prevent him from ever returning to the dream sand factory and refilling his pockets with sand. At least, they say, Sally has found her way home. Dream Town is where she belongs, and they know she will be happy here with people who love her.
Her parents persuade her to lie down for a while, promising not to take any action until she has a chance to rest. Sally lies on her bed, thinking that if there is nothing she can do to help Jack or any of the other sleepers, she might as well stay in Dream Town. She tries to imagine what her life would be like if she had never been stolen as a child. She tries to imagine the kind of boy she might have loved, but no one could ever make her feel what she feels for Jack. She gets up and goes to the window. When she looks back toward her bed, she sees a stack of books underneath. Investigating, she discovers one called, The Basics of Slumber: Dream Town Edition. Inside, she reads the words, “Everyone, everywhere can achieve sleep. Some just need to be shown how” (135). Sally realizes there might be a way to save everyone after all. Intending to tell her parents what she has found, she tries to open her bedroom door and discovers she has been locked in.
Sally realizes her parents lied to her. They will destroy the trees while she is supposed to be asleep. She shouts for help until she attracts the attention of a little boy on the street, who comes up and unlocks her door. The boy asks Sally if she is really the governors’ daughter, and she replies that she is, but she’s not staying in Dream Town. He asks why, and she tells him, “Because I am the Queen of Halloween Town, and I am going back home” (140).
Sally runs to catch up with her parents and the group who have gone to destroy the grove, but she arrives too late. They have just cut down the last tree. Enraged, Sally shouts at them that they have lied to her. They said they would wait to cut down the trees until after Sally woke. Her father tells her they had to cut down the trees, and they didn’t tell her because they didn’t want to lose her again.
Sally shows them the book and tells them she knows how to defeat the Sandman. She has to put him to sleep. Her father says it’s impossible; dreams sand doesn’t work on the Sandman. Sally tells him she wouldn’t use dreams sand. She would use a sleeping potion using herbs from Halloween Town, which are far more potent than anything grown in Dream Town. She can defeat the Sandman, but to do so, she has to get home, and they have destroyed the possibility forever.
Her mother admits there is one last way she might return to Halloween Town. There’s a door into the human world in the Lullaby Library. From there, she can get to any library in the human world, find a graveyard, and use that to get to Halloween Town. They show her the door and tell her that after she leaves, they will destroy it to make absolutely sure the Sandman can never get back into Dream Town. However, Sally will not be able to return either. Sally loves them, but she has to let them go. She steps through the door.
The discovery of her true origins is Sally’s opportunity to go back to her beginnings and rebuild her idea of who she is—not someone else’s creation, an object, but a child who was loved and had a personality of her own. The risk is that she may be tempted to revert to that childhood and stay there forever, and she does consider staying in Dream Town. This is the part of the maiden’s story arc where she contemplates fulfilling her family’s needs instead of her own. She has spent her childhood subordinating her own needs to those of her community—a false appearance of maturity.
When Sally’s parents lock her in her room to protect her while they go to close the doors to the other holiday worlds, Sally sees that staying in Dream Town would be just as much a trap as her life with Doctor Finkelstein. Ultimately, she wants adulthood, represented by Jack, more than the love and security of being a child. She abandons childhood forever and embraces the person she has become. To do so, she must fight to escape the loving clutch of the parents who want her to remain their child.
Communities thrive on stability. To that end, parents tell their children if they must go into the woods, they should stay on the path. To venture into the trackless woods threatens to make the child too different from the rest of the community, and the difference may be disruptive. On the other hand, without innovation, communities stagnate. The people of Dream Town have been isolated from the other worlds for so long that they have lost the ability to solve problems. Their response to change is to wall themselves off even more thoroughly.
If Sally’s parents succeed in isolating Dream Town from the human world as well as the other holiday worlds, they will lose the entire purpose of their existence. By straying completely from the path her parents would have chosen for her, Sally returns, bringing with her a new way of thinking that enables the community to adapt to a changing environment, saving it from destruction.
By discovering a way to overcome the Sandman, Sally demonstrates that she has outgrown her role as a child. Her knowledge and understanding are now greater than that of her parents. Had she not been stolen and taken to Halloween Town, she might never have learned cunning and subtlety and the use of sleeping potions.