27 pages • 54 minutes read
Stephen KingThe Boogeyman
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1973A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Lester Billings
Lester is a relatively static protagonist who does not undergo a significant arc or change during the narrative. He claims that guilt and feelings of responsibility for his children’s deaths compel him to visit the therapist, Dr. Harper. His choice to tell his story drives the narrative forward. However, Lester clarifies that his intention is to get events off his chest rather than learn from them. At the end of the story, he reluctantly agrees to further therapy with Dr. Harper, but the Boogeyman appears before he can schedule his next session and complete his internal change.
King explores the theme of Supernatural Versus Human Monstrosity through Lester. His character represents the human counterpart to the Boogeyman itself. While recounting his story, he inadvertently reveals a great deal about his character. While admitting to neglectful parenting, his comments also show him to be racist, misogynistic, and guilty of domestic abuse. These “tells” lead readers to question the reliability of Lester’s account, suggesting he may have murdered his children.
Lester also illustrates The Nature of Fear in the narrative. His fearfulness only exacerbates his monstrosity, culminating in him leaving his son as bait for the Boogeyman and fleeing the house until he knows it is safe to return. Subsequently, he channels his feelings of guilt into a form of self-punishment, prompting him to seek out Dr. Harper.
Dr. Harper
Dr. Harper can be analyzed in two different ways, depending on which ending the reader subscribes to. If he is killed and replaced by the Boogeyman at the story’s end, his primary purpose is to facilitate Lester’s account. By asking questions, he keeps Lester on track as he tells his story. Although the therapist says little, his observations of his patient provide non-verbal clues about Lester’s character. For example, he notices Lester’s “rubbery, frightening grin” as he recounts how his marriage changed after Denny’s birth (103). Lester’s sinister facial expression undercuts his claim that they were happy. Dr. Harper also occasionally interjects in instances where Lester is critical of his wife. When Lester suggests that Rita removed her IUD to deliberately get pregnant, the therapist states that “[n]o birth-control method is perfect” (107). In these occasional injections, Dr. Harper becomes the sole voice of reason in the narrative.
In an alternative reading, where Dr. Harper is the Boogeyman in a mask all along, he becomes the story’s antagonist. In this interpretation, the Boogeyman is more than a monster who lurks in the darkness and slithers out under the cover of night. Instead, he is a manipulative shape-shifter, capable not only of violence but of functioning as a human being. He also has patience and foresight, concocting and executing a plan to assume a therapist’s identity and guide a patient through a full session before finally revealing himself. In both scenarios, Dr. Harper serves to coax Lester’s story out of him, but whether it is to help him work through his guilt or to taunt him before his death remains ambiguous.
The Boogeyman
The supernatural counterpart to Lester’s monstrosity, the titular Boogeyman is the antagonist of the story and a true monster—the kind that haunts the nightmares of children and adults alike. The mere presence of the Boogeyman in this text suggests that seemingly irrational childhood fears could be well-founded.
Lester’s accounts of the Boogeyman emphasize the difference between Supernatural Versus Human Monstrosity. The monster’s inherently evil nature is echoed in his frightening outward appearance. Lester describes him as something with “awful slumped shoulders and a scarecrow head” and a smell “like a dead mouse in a pop bottle” (110). In addition to this description, there are several mentions of the creature’s long claws.
As he kills Lester’s children one by one, the Boogeyman effectively pushes Lester’s fear of the unknown to the limits. This is illustrated when Lester finally leaves his son alone as a sacrifice to the monster. One could argue that the Boogeyman is, essentially, Lester’s reflection. For all of the times the Boogeyman was violent toward and caused harm to Lester’s children, Lester had caused them harm first. At the end of the story, the Boogeyman reappears to remind Lester that no amount of guilt or therapy can atone for his own monstrous actions.
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