Realism In Stephen King's 'The Boogeyman'

There has been a flood of folklore and popular myth on the subject of supernatural beings capable of sucking the life out of their victims. One can find a mention of these creatures throughout the centuries. From a Succubus in the Bible to the Vampires of today’s Twilight Sagas, the short story “Luella Miller” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman is no different. This story, unlike many other tails, did not just come out and say that the creature was present for sure; it more or less hinted to it possible existences. Also the hypnotic state that the victims were in brings the reader to believe that something unnatural is at hand. With a closer look through the eyes of our narrator, Lydia Anderson, we can

Monsters have plagued the minds of humans for ages. They range from ghost, to psycho stalkers to the boogie man. The have been used as the main feature of horror movies, scary stories, and terrifying legends and myths. However some people will just dismiss these type of monsters and superstition and boldly claim that monsters do not exist. These people are wrong. Those who have been infected by monsters reside everywhere but most people do not notice. Monsters come with different types of ferocity. Some more deadly than others, some more silent. Sometimes people do not even notice monsters even though they see them everyday. The reason why these types of monsters remain so frightening is because no one can escape them, wherever humans

The idea of what a monster is and how it pertains to modern day society has fascinated readers and writers for decades. Before taking this class, I was aware of what a monster is and the function it served in today’s society. Furthermore, after taking this class, I am now aware of what a monster truly is, and what really separates a monster from a regular person. The piece of text that I mainly chose to focus on and elaborate closely to demonstrate the aspects of a monster is appropriately named, Monster, by Walter Dean Myers. The reason I chose this piece of literature is because, Monster thoroughly elaborates what a monster is in todays society and how it functions in the modern day world. In this essay I will elaborate on

The fear creeping up my skin as goosebumps begin to appear with the first steps into a haunted house filled with monsters, screams, and darkness. The weird smells and sounds and occasional air blasts lead to a rush or adrenaline, which create a dreadful sensation. The idea of having someone creep up behind me causes my spine to tingle and the hairs on my neck to rise. Fear is an inevitable emotion that comes in various forms whether it be monsters, Gothic elements, or transformations within stories. Through the three short stories, the readers are introduced to the effects that the transformations in the mood, characters, and setting have on the tension and build of fear in the readers.

Asma states, "Monsters can stand as symbols of human vulnerability and crisis, and as such they play imaginative foils for thinking about our own responses to menace.” This means that human weaknesses and fears are represented through monstrous figures, and these fictional situations provide perspective into how we react in fearful environments. In our current society we fear many things, including but not limited to failed or corrupt governmental systems, the afterlife, the unknown, and captivity, which makes this claim valid. Although we may not realize it, these fears are embodied by the horror monsters we see in popular culture. Society shares common fears, and often times the most prevailing fear is reflected in the most popular characters at any given time. Monsters are the fictional representations of society’s dark subconscious, exploring not only why the author’s statement is accurate but what we actually fear.

The three children of the separated family father Lester Billings are dead, like a psychiatrist tells, killed by the Boogeyman. The worst thing for Billings is that he has suspected that, when his first child died, and was sure, when his second child died. Still he admitted that the Boogeyman took his third child. Now he believes that the Boogeyman will take him too, and he is afraid to open his closets at home. His psychiatrist, Dr.Harper understands him well, too well. At the entering to the lobby, there is no one to help him and when he return into the room, Lester Billings finds the psychiatrist taking off his mask to show him that he is the boogeyman, the person who had killed his three children.

King argues the genre has an important role because while watching a horror movie people show their true emotions. King uses the words “daring the nightmare” to explain the experiences people put themselves through when they pay to be frightened (King 1). The truth is most of them go to see the most brutal way’s producers can come up with to harm someone. As the king of horror himself puts it, “It urges us to put away our more civilized and adult penchant for analysis and to become children again… We are told we may allow our emotions a free rein… or no rein at all” (King 2). It’s fun to let loose and feel crazy sometimes, feel no one is watching. Still, people are watching, so what keeps them from putting everyone into an asylum?

Terror is repeated frequently throughout the novel, the creature represents this terror and the unknown by being created scientifically. Victor Frankenstein’s experiences a dynamic change when he

Monsters, those that are real and those that are fake, both have a habit of emitting the same feeling of dread that tends to linger in our minds and make us paranoid enough to look behind ourselves. The term monster, used throughout history and applied to animals and the animalistic behaviour of man, as a way of giving the general public what they want and what they have always wanted which is a ‘label’ as we believe them to be a menace that can’t be or is not worth being helped or rehabilitated. The term monster is also one that feeds the urges of the gothic, one of its many key contributors Mary Shelley, holds the title to what is the possibly the most well renowned pieces of gothic literature, ‘Frankenstein’, a piece of literature that alludes

Most people are not aware that our fears can affect the decisions we make in our everyday lives. Chuck Klosterman’s My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead dives into the deeper meaning behind the world’s fascination with the undead. Klosterman first explains the roots behind the different popularities of different monsters: “Frankenstein exemplified our terror of untethered science, Godzilla emerged from the atomic age, werewolves arose from panic of being preyed upon, vampires represented the loss of purity or AIDS, and zombies represent rabies or the pitfalls of consumerism” (Klosterman). In this passage we learn how each monster is associated to different fears people have faced in the past and present. Frankenstein was feared because that was

This story was full of gloomy settings, monsters, characters in distress, and intense emotions. All of these elements made The Boogeyman gothic literature. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this short story, it was full of suspense, mystery, and very different from what I usually read. Gothic literature is classically made up by these elements that I identified. This gothic literature piece was my favorite one that we read and the story that I thought showed perfect examples of four of the elements that make up gothic

Intro-The Boogeyman is a horror character that appears in short stories he scares children at a certain age usually 2-6 years old.This horror character usually only comes for you when you’re alone typically at night when you are sleeping in your room, he hides in the closet.What he does is he is the horror character that makes young kids do as they are told like for example when your mom says eat your vegetables and you said no as a kid she would say ¨ok if you don´t eat your vegetables the Boogeyman will come for you at night.¨So the Boogeyman is there to ensure we follow the rules and bring good behavior towards children.

In the article, it explains how a Boogeyman can be anything that will scare you straight up. There isn’t a specific shape or form to the Boogeyman, it’s just suppose to be something that will make you scared. The Boogeyman isn’t located in just one place. It can be in your closet at night when you’re asleep, it can be in the backseat of your car when you’re alone. It can be anywhere your mind places it. Stuff like this is first introduced to little kids who are not behaving well or are not following specific instructions. Many parents use this term to get their child to do specific things. For example, a parent can say, “Eat your vegetables or the () will come get you in your sleep.” For this example, this forces the child to eat their vegetables because they’re scared that someone or something will come get them. They don’t know what will get them, but they know something will. At a certain age, their imagination can start to change their perspective on things. In the short story, it explains how a family of five becomes a family of just

In the world, there are hundreds of thousands of writers, yet there are less than a third of that in different genres. Knowing that there are fewer genres than writers, it makes since that authors would know each other and share their ideas. Authors like Stephen King, whose stories are popular enough to produce as movies, admit to being inspired by other authors, such as H.P. Lovecraft. It's not just Stephen King who says he's inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, scholars and fans of Stephen King agree with him, saying there are trace elements of Lovecraftian horror in Stephen King's stories. Lovecraftian horror was named after H.P. Lovecraft, and is defined by Daniel Harms in his article “The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana: A guide to Lovecraftian Horror,” published in Chaosium in 1998, as “a subgenre of horror fiction that emphasizes the cosmic horror of the unknown and unknowable more than gore or other elements of shock, though these may still be present.” The thought of authors sharing ideas and being inspired by each other, especially Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft, led me to my research question. How is Stephen King's literature lovecraftian in nature? The purpose of this question is to show readers that, although they may read one author and understand their ideas and writing styles, that it is not uncommon to find a second author with very similar writing styles and ideas as the first author. Sharing ideas and writing styles between authors, within and outside of a

When you were a child were you ever afraid of the dark? Or the closet? Did you ever think that a crazy child eating monster was in your closet? Such as the bogeyman. Most of the time your parents had to check your room and under your bed to make sure nothing was there when you went to sleep. They had to make sure there was nothing in the closet and that it was tightly closed shut. (paragraph 2 of “Scientific American”)