Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

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).