Humor

Literal Literary Halloween Costumes

Jessica Woodbury

Staff Writer

Jessica Woodbury's professional life has taken her to prisons, classrooms, strip clubs, and her living room couch. After years as a Public Defender in the South, she now lives in Boston with her two small children. Cursed with a practical streak, she always wanted to pursue music or writing but instead majored in Biochemistry because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. These days she does absolutely nothing with science or law and instead spends too much time oversharing on the internet. She has a soft spot for crime novels and unreliable narrators. And the strip club gig was totally as a lawyer, she swears.  Blog: Don't Mind the Mess Twitter: jessicaesquire

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Literature loves metaphors. But a great costume takes the metaphorical and interprets it without much thought for subtlety. Here are some suggestions for literary costumes from not-so-symbolic novel title interpretations. The Grapes of Wrath Supplies: clothes of your choice, but preferably green. 10 or more balloons, either all green or all purple. A marker. Directions: Blow up the balloons. Draw angry faces on them. Secure them to your clothes. Lord of the Flies Supplies: fly costume (you can DIY it with black clothes, wings, and a couple extra stuffed legs), crown. Directions: Wear fly costume. Put on crown. The Catcher in the Rye Supplies: baseball mitt, stalks of wheat or corn. Directions: Put on mitt. Fasten grain to clothes. Catch-22 Supplies: baseball mitt, paper, scissors Directions: Cut out two numeral 2’s from the paper. Fasten to the inside of the baseball mitt. A Clockwork Orange Supplies: Orange shirt, marker. Directions: Draw a clock on the shirt. Put on shirt. Bonus points for drawing in gears and clockworks. The Portrait of a Lady Supplies: Picture Frame or just cut a frame shape out of a cardboard box and decorate it to look like a picture frame. Directions: Arrange frame so it goes around face and secure. Note: Must be a lady to pull this off. Fahrenheit 451 Supplies: White shirt, black marker, red marker. Directions: Draw a thermometer on the shirt that goes from 0 degrees to 500 degrees with the black marker. Color it up to 451 with the red marker. Bonus points for making one side in Fahrenheit and the other in Celsius.