The Boogeyman – Stephen King (1978)
Summary: Lester Billings, the father of three children is talking to a shrink. He seems mentally disturbed. His first two children died of mysteriously courses, but both of the children had cried boogeyman right before their death. After Lester had his third son, one night the son screams and Lester sees that a boogeyman is killing his son, but Lester doesn’t help his son, instead he runs away and when he returns his son is dead. When Lester Billings leaves his shrink, he sees that the shrink is actually the boogeyman.
Their marriage: Lester and Rita Billings’ marriage has probably never been characterized by equality. He is the kind of man who believes that women’s station in life is to follow their husbands. (page 5. ) When Rita denies that she has taught Denny the word “Boogeyman”, he calls her a liar and feels like “slapping her around. ” This certainly indicates the opposite to a marriage based on mutual confidence, love, and support. Lester does not have very much respect for Rita. I think he has married her out of necessity. Now he tries to imagine that their marriage is happy, perfect and like his mother wanted it to be.
Lester actually thinks that Rita is a jellyfish. I think he sees every woman as jellyfish -something, which is inferior. He has to control Rita: “She still wanted to do what I told her. That’s the wife’s place, right? This women’s lib makes people sick. The most important thing in life for a person is to know his place. ” Page 5. Time Seen in a perspective of time the majority the American population regarded pregnancy before marriage as a grave matter. The marriage between Lester Billings and his wife does not seem to be the happy ending of some love story.
They were both very young, and the reason why they got married was the unexpected pregnancy, LB left college to get a job and support the little family. The marriage was, somewhat, a solution to the situation at the time, a solution to keep an acceptable position in society. Lester billings Charact. : He is against women’s liberation, which takes place at the time. He wants to appear powerful and to possess the leading role of his marriage The way in which he has been raised has probably inspired him to develop this attitude. One attitude caused by the mother is the one towards his children concerning where they are to sleep.
Billings believes that his mother has been too over-protective with him, and this has had a negative influence on him. He mentions the episode from the beach. Lester Billings does not really take notice of the rest of society. He does not choose a position in the matter of the Vietnam War or the black Americans’ civil rights movement. He and Rita isolate themselves in the little family. He thinks highly of himself. He believes that his decisions and methods are the right ones because he is the man of the family. Lester Billings is not a soft family man.
In the beginning of the story he claims that children tie a man down. He is not very gentle towards his first son Denny. He hits him if he does not stop crying. He says that it is actually impossible to remember your kids when they are lost at a young age because you have not come to feel very attached to them yet. This is an enormously cynical idea in my opinion. Dr. Harper: The psychiatrist is portrayed as a passive spectator. He only replies to Billings’ story with a few comments. However, he makes Billings talk and perhaps he realises something from this monologue.
The ending could symbolise the victory of anxiety, fear that he maybe have realized what he was afraid of realizing. Interpretation: I think the ending is a simple clue to the reader that suppressed anxieties and frustrations create these hidden boogeymen that are able to scare ourselves as well as others. They take many shapes and perhaps everybody has got one. Perhaps the doctor simply wears the mask of the boogeyman in the end, as a representative of LB’s personal internal conflict. The boogeyman lives in our subconscious mind, it lives in children’s minds- in their fantasy.
Small children are the most sensitive about fear. They need their parents’ protection and you cannot get too overprotective to children at that age. Lester cannot realise this. That is why he has to pay with the most precious in life- his own children and finally his own life. “I started to think, maybe all the monsters we were scared of then we were kids, Frankenstein and Wolfman and mummy, maybe they were real. Real enough to kill kids that were supposed to have fallen into gravel pits and drowned in lakes or were just never found. Maybe…”
The Boogeyman represents many things, such as, anger, fear and paranoia. You think that it is only children who are afraid of “boogeymen”, but in this story we see that also adults get afraid and paranoid and believe that there is something in the closet, under the bed, down in the basement etc. It is fear of the unknown and the superstitions, which every human being has thought about, but some gets very paranoid and they think something is out to get them. I think King’s stories also appeal to the female readers and not just to men.
I think that women would understand the stories just like men. But it is right to say that King uses Women like subordinate parts in his stories and it is mostly men who has the leading parts. The boogeyman represents Lester’s fear of being the father who gives his children a bad upbringing. I do believe that Billings has killed his children himself. Some of his statements indicate this. “Christ, kids drive you crazy sometimes. You could kill them. ” (Page 4) The frustrations from his own childhood may have affected him so deeply that he kills his children.
