51 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen King, Richard ChizmarGwendy's Button Box
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Fate Versus Free Will
The button box forces Gwendy to question her reality, particularly whether her success—and her nightmarish failures—are a result of fate or free will. After coming into possession of the box, Gwendy’s life dramatically improves: She’s admired as beautiful, earns higher grades, and excels in sports. Yet she always feels unsure what part of her success is earned versus provided to her by the button box: “The questions remain: How much of her life is her own doing, and how much the doing of the box with its treats and buttons” (58). As Gwendy grows and matures, she becomes less dependent on the button box and many of these concerns about fate and free will disappear. Her relationship with Harry reflects her growth as a character into a more confident and content person with far less need for the benefits the button box provides. As the effects of the button box start to wear off, Gwendy finds she doesn’t care. Her decision to ignore the button box signals her desire to embrace her autonomy: “I don’t need it, she thinks. More importantly, I don’t want it. The realization makes her head sing and her heart soar, and Gwendy returns to her bedroom with a spring to her step and a smile on her face” (125). However, King and Chizmar continue to blur the line between fate and free will by emphasizing Gwendy’s continued connection to the box despite her desire to distance herself from it. Even after declaring her independence from the box, Gwendy wakes the next morning to find herself “cradling the button box in her arms like a faithful lover and her right thumb [resting] a half-inch from the black button” (127). The subliminal pull Gwendy feels to the button box’s power complicates her desire for autonomy and freedom from its influence reasserting the novella’s inherent exploration of which force ultimately wields the most power over Gwendy’s life: fate (as represented by the button box) or free will. And further, is the button box a force in and of itself, or is its power derived only from Gwendy’s choice to use it?
Gwendy’s final encounter with Mr. Farris when he comes to retrieve the button box suggests a narrative perspective in which fate and free will have a shared role in her life. Mr. Farris absolves Gwendy of culpability for the events surrounding her use of the button box, claiming that those tragedies were the result of the free will of others:
‘You give yourself far too much credit,’ he says sharply. ‘Jim Jones caused Jonestown. The so-called Reverend was as crazy as a rat in a rainbarrel. Paranoid, mother-fixated, and full of deadly conceit. As for your friend Olive, I know you’ve always felt you were somehow responsible for her suicide, but I assure you that’s not the case. Olive had ISSUES. Your word for it’ (151).
However, when Gwendy counters that Harry and Olive would still be alive if she had never taken possession of the button box, he replies, “Harry? Yes, maybe. Maybe. Olive, however, was doomed. You bear no responsibility for her, believe me” (153). In this final conversation with Mr. Farris, King and Chizmar suggest that while Gwendy’s life is ultimately affected by fate, her own choices and actions play a vital role in creating her future. Mr. Farris’s final image of Gwendy sitting “down at her typewriter—her button box—and [tapping away]” (158), taking control of her life and future through writing frames the button box (like her typewriter) as a tool she utilized to shape her own life rather than an agent of fate itself.
The Murky Line Between Selfishness and Selflessness
Throughout the novella, Gwendy feels a constant tension around whether her use of the button box is selfish, establishing the line between selfishness and selflessness as Gwendy’s personal litmus test for her moral character. Over the course of the coming-of-age arc that King and Chizmar establish for Gwendy, she learns to distinguish between the responsibility she bears for her actions and the misplaced guilt she feels for the actions of others. For example, Gwendy’s relationship with Olive ends because Olive claims that Gwendy treats her like a “charity case.” When Gwendy offers to set Olive up with a boy she likes, Olive responds, “‘I don’t need your goddamn charity.’ She bends down and gathers her books and folders into her arms […] ‘That’s your problem,’ Olive says, pulling away again. ‘You only think about yourself. You’re selfish.’” (71). Initially, Gwendy feels Olive’s accusations as a personal indictment—one exacerbated when Olive dies by suicide. In an attempt to make amends, Gwendy decides to destroy the Suicide Steps—a concrete act to honor her friend and protect others. However, Gwendy remains haunted by Olive’s death, reflected in her fear of seeing Olive’s ghost: “Because—this is crazy, but in the dark it has the force of truth—what if she met Olive halfway up? Olive with her head half bashed in and one eye dangling on her cheek? What if Olive pushed her? Or talked her into jumping?” (110). Because Gwendy still carries a sense of guilt and responsibility for her friend’s actions, she views potential punishment for them as inevitable. She hasn’t yet matured enough to separate her guilt and grief from her sense of personal culpability.
In the novella’s resolution, Gwendy finally accepts the fact that the choices of others are their own, just as her own choices are her own—a message supported by Mr. Farris’s assurance that Gwendy “bears no responsibility” for Olive’s death (153). When Mr. Farris comes to retrieve the button box, Gwendy initially hesitates, wary of subjecting another person to the burden of the box’s power. Mr. Farris soothes her worries by comparing the button box to the typewriter she will use to write award-winning work—both tools utilized by her to shape the future rather than actors creating the future themselves. Gwendy finds herself “both surprised and a little disgusted at how greedy she is for this news” (153), underscoring the challenging and painful journey of growing up.
The Weight and Isolation of Secrets
While Gwendy feels her life drastically improved after coming into possession of the button box, she also feels increasingly isolated because she cannot tell anyone about the button box and its powers. Ultimately her relationship with Olive collapses because the social divide between them facilitated by the button box exacerbates Olive’s insecurities and heightens the impact of the bullying she experiences at school. When Olive accuses Gwendy of being selfish, Gwendy overreacts and snaps at her. When Olive leaves, Gwendy collapses on the bed and reveals her true feelings:
‘That’s not true,’ Gwendy whispers to the empty room. ‘I think about others. I try to be a good person. I made a mistake about Guyana, but I was…I was tricked into it, and I wasn’t the one who poisoned them. It wasn’t me.’ Except it sort of was. Gwendy cries herself to sleep and dreams of nurses bearing syringes of Kool-Aid death to small children” (71).
Gwendy is haunted by what she perceives to be her role in the Jonestown Massacre; however, she feels she cannot tell anyone about what happened. As a result, she buries her secret and isolates herself from her friends despite her deep desire for a confidante: “Sometimes, she wishes she could talk to someone about it. Sometimes, she wishes she were still friends with Olive. She might be the only person in the world who would listen and believe her” (101).
Gwendy feels a constant tension between her desire to maintain the benefits she believes the box brings her and the weight of responsibility she feels to keep its existence a secret. Gwendy’s dependence on the box’s benefits for her happiness decreases as she grows more mature and more confident in and comfortable with herself. The happiness and contentment she feels in her relationship with Harry reflect this maturity—albeit contentment that proves short-lived when Frankie uses the button box to bludgeon Harry to death.
Despite the independence that Gwendy established from the button box during her relationship with Harry, the weight of responsibility she feels to maintain its secrecy continues until Mr. Farris passes the box to a new guardian. For example, Gwendy hides the button box from the police,
[I]n [her] dresser, along with the coins. [She thinks] about dipping one of [her] high heel shoes in Harry’s blood to explain the…the bludgeoning…but [she can’t] bring [herself] to do it. In the end it didn’t matter. They just assumed Frankie took the murder weapon with him (152).
She knows that she cannot let the police learn about the button box or the fact that Frankie rotted in front of her eyes. However, by hiding this fact from the police, she never gets justice for Harry’s death. Gwendy continues to grieve over withholding the truth and abstains from dating throughout college, leading her to be even more isolated.
In the novella’s conclusion, Mr. Farris reveals to her that once she is free of the box, she will live a life full of deep friendships: “you will die surrounded by friends, in a pretty nightgown with blue flowers on the hem” (155). Notably, she is only able to be surrounded by true friends when the button box—and its secrets—are out of her possession.
Related Titles
By these authors
