Author:

Stephen King, born in September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine, is a prolific American author,
widely acclaimed for his mastery of the horror genre, although having successfully explored
others such as mystery, crime, fantasy, science fiction, suspense. King’s most famous pieces
were created in his late twenties- early and mid thirties, like “Carrie” (1974), “The Shining”
(1977), “Pet Sematary” (1983) and “It” (1986), among many others, but he started his writing
from a very early age.
King had a very traumatizing background, as his father abandoned him, his brother David and
mother, when he was barely two years old. Since then, the three faced great financial strain,
which led them to constantly move from one city to another: from Scarborough, in Yorkshire,
England, to Chicago, Illinois, Fort Wayne and, after many others, to Stratford, Connecticut.
His mother did her very best to raise two children while working as a caregiver at a local
residential facility for the mentally challenged.
From a young age (6-7), King exhibited a keen interest in writing, initially by copying comic
book panels and later creating his own stories. His aunt Gert encouraged this talent by paying
him a quarter for each story he wrote, fostering his early literary pursuits. It’s no surprise his
captivating writing of horror stories given that, as he told NPR Magazine in an interview, he
had quite an active mind as a kid, constantly wanting to be scared and being fascinated by
death. King longed to be haunted by what children are commonly haunted: he feared what
was behind his closet door, and he needed that extra night-light on to sleep.
He published his first independent work in a fanzine in 1965 and wrote for the student
newspaper at University of Maine at Orono (from which he graduated in 1970 with a
bachelor of arts in English). When he graduated, he found it difficult to land a job in
education, so he sold his shorts stories to magazines like “Cavalier”, a men’s magazine which
originally sought to feature novelettes and excerpts from novels, where “The Boogeyman”, a
short story that delves into the primal fears of childhood, was first published (later
republished in “Night Shift”, the first collection of short stories from the author in 1978.
“The boogeyman” can be interpreted as a deep mirroring of Stephen King’s haunting
experiences and fascination for the macabre, the unknown. His childhood fears were
portrayed as the protagonist’s children's fears, and his father’s abandonment can be
interpreted as Lester’s guilt for not having saved his kids from the abominable “boogeyman”.
Additionally, in an interview for “Penthouse” magazine, in 1982, King revealed one of his
most famous pieces: “The Shining”, a novel in which a father and husband becomes strangely
enraged and aims to murder his family, came from his own aggressive impulses he
sometimes has towards his own kids. He explores the guilt and sorry feeling one can have as
a parent as you “remember times when you felt like knocking your kid’s head right off his
shoulders because he wouldn’t shut up”. His desire to “explore the dark limits of human
behavior” could be spotted in “The Boogeyman”, as this short story leads the writer to
believe that the protagonist, Lester, may have led his children into the creeping hands of a
terrifying monster out of the aggressive and spiteful behavior he describes having towards his
family.

Plot:
Exposition: “The Boogeyman” tells us the story of a man, Lester Billings, who seeks help
from a psychiatrist because of the death of his 3 children. He seems paranoid and angry, often
lashing out at the doctor. At first, he claims that he killed his children, but later goes on to say
he is just rather “responsible” for their deaths. Lester is portrayed as being fully certain that
they were murdered but that no one believes him.

Rising action: The rising action begins when Lester alleges that the boogeyman killed his
three children, Denny, Shirl and Andrew and retells the story. When the first issues arose
with Denny, he often disregarded the child’s fears and kept rambling about how you don’t
“coddle kids” and how harmful it is to overprotect them. He denied him a nightlight and
ignored his constant crying at night. Denny told his father about the Boogeyman the day he
died, but Lester ignored him, instead blaming his wife for “teaching him that word”. When
they found the child’s corpse, the closet door was slightly open. A year later, Shirl also began
telling Lester about the boogeyman, but he didn’t do anything about it as he couldn’t accept
he was wrong about the entity’s existence, even after experiencing strange things happening
in his house, such as seeing shadows, hearing “wet noises” out of nowhere and even
dreaming about the creature. Both of the children’s deaths were ruled accidental; Denny by
“crib death” (sudden infant death syndrome) and Shirl by a brain convulsion that made her
swallow her tongue. Then, after an unplanned pregnancy, the couple had another child named
Andrew. Although Lester claimed to love the child, he chose to leave him unattended in
another room the minute supernatural things started happening again when Rita wasn’t home,
fearing the creature might come for him. The night he moved him, the boogeyman broke
Andrew’s neck and instead of calling the police immediately, Lester fled the house and called
them in the morning, lying about the events to portray the death as an accident. He also
implies Rita now “knew” about the truth.

Climax: After telling his story, the psychiatrist asks Lester to schedule new appointments
with his nurse as he believes he carries a lot of guilt and needs extended treatment. Lester
approaches the desk where the nurse should be but she’s not there, and there’s only a sign
that reads “Back in a minute”.

Falling action: After returning to the doctor’s office, he notices that the closet door is
slightly ajar…

Outcome: The boogeyman lunges at Lester from the open closet and presumably kills him,
Dr. Harper’s mask in hand, repeating “so nice, so nice”.

Characters:
Flat characters:
- Dr. Harper
- The Boogeyman
- Rita
- The children
- Nurse Vickers

Round characters:
- Lester Billings

Place or setting:
The story is set in the United States, between late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The story takes place in a
psychiatrist’s office in the early 1970’s, but the year isn’t explicitly mentioned.

Mood and atmosphere:

Theme/Symbols:
This short story explores the themes of: mental health, patriarchal control, parenting fears,
guilt, and childhood trauma.
Mental health is the first theme explored and the one from which the story revolves around,
as Lester makes an appointment with Dr.Harper to explore the immense trauma he’s left with
after the separate deaths of his three children.
Patriarchal control is embodied by Billings’s persona. We are shown a father and husband
with violent tendencies and a recurring thought that his wife had ruined his life by trapping
him into having three unwanted kids. Among other signs, the main trace of this idea comes
from his authoritarian ruling, as he does not permit his children to sleep in the bed with him
and his wife, even after their recurring night terrors and wetting of the bed. Also, dismissing
his wife’s feelings after the loss of their kids can be interpreted as a way to use the privileged
position a man has in a traditional marriage to avoid carrying guilt or being challenged in
parenting decisions.
Parenting fears is a theme that mostly connects to the theme of childhood trauma, as Lester’s
cold and dismissive parenting is written to be the consequence of a fear of the water he
adopted at a very early age due to his own parent’s actions. He believed that fear, which in
his eyes was childish and a sign of weakness, stemmed from over-protectiveness and
coddling; given so, he claims the sole reason for not paying attention to his kids was so that
they would not grow spoiled and fearful like him. Later on, we learn that this was merely a
facade, and Billings was actually scared of the boogeyman, and cowardly left his kids
unattended to be victims of the monster he could not bring himself to face.
Some symbols we were able to spot in this story are deeply rooted in child-like fears, such as
a closet door half open or the existence of the boogeyman itself. We believe these are placed
in the story to make the average reader dismiss the children’s whines and not suspect at all
the final twist.
The boogeyman can be interpreted as a symbol. as opposed to a character, in different ways:
One tendency is to see the boogeyman as a reflection of Lester’s own immaturity and
childhood trauma. The way in which he describes him is so as to compare him with a
character from an old comic book of his, and he wets his pants when the monster finally
“captures” him in Dr. Harper’s office. Following this idea, the boogeyman could be
interpreted as Billings not being able to face the fact that his kids are dead due to natural
causes and an immature (“I believe in monsters” type) way in which he deals with something
parents understand as failure (not being able to protect kids). This immaturity can be traced in
the fact that he was very young when he had his first baby boy and he had felt trapped ever
since with the births of the other two.
A second interpretation for the boogeyman as a symbol, which is not actually confirmed by
the author and remains as a fan’s theory, is the one that claims this monster actually embodies
a hidden personality of Lester’s. The fact that it only attacked at night, coincidentally when
Billing’s wife was sleeping, or at times when he was all alone with the kid, is used to favor
this idea. As this protagonist is shown to be very violent and authoritarian, one could be led
to believe that those behavioral forces took over him and, in a state of blinding rage, made
him kill his children. The figure of an external monster could be used to represent Lester’s
monstrous actions which he, in a bipolar kind of way, refuses to own up to. The fact that Dr.
Harper was revealed to be the boogeyman could actually be used to claim that Lester see’s
him that way because Dr Harper embodies the realization that he was, in fact, the murderer.

Style:
The author uses everyday speech accompanied by a lot of dialogue.

Narrator/point of view:
The story is told from a 3rd person limited point of view: To add a sense of unreliability and to
portray a common urge to keep the reader at edge, constantly expecting a sudden scare, many
horror stories, and this one is no exception, narrate from a 3rd person point of view.
However, we are only fed with each and every expression and feeling Lester has during his
therapy session, given that a focus only made on him makes the reader believe such level of
detail hints a sinister side to the protagonist (recurring mention of odd grins and weird hand
positioning). This narration also reveals to the reader how this character that aims to seem
tough is actually pretty paranoid and scared of the creature he describes. The whole story
about the killings and the vague but terrifying manifestations of the boogeyman is mostly
narrated by Billings through 1st person dialogue, but dialogue is not the same as narration.