Gwendy's Button Box

Only one image appears in this section of the novella: an ominous silhouette of Lenny holding a knife that serves as a red herring that foreshadows the violence of the novella’s climax. The chapter eventually reveals that the image depicts Lenny brandishing a knife not to hurt Gwendy, but to protect her from Frankie, foreshadowing the climactic moment that Frankie attacks Gwendy with a knife, stabbing her in the foot as he attempts to rape her.

This section of the novella focuses primarily on Olive’s death by suicide. The recurring motif of the Suicide Steps highlights the treacherous challenges of navigating prescribed social standards and norms in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Olive’s death propels Gwendy from inaction to action as she attempts to assuage her guilt over the dissolution of her friendship with Olive by intervening after her death the way she failed to do when Olive was alive. Gwendy’s decision to destroy the Suicide Steps marks the first time she consciously uses the button box’s destructive power with intention, indicating the progression of her coming-of-age arc as she begins to take responsibility for her actions and choices. Gwendy decides,

[She] never wants to see [the Suicide Steps] again. 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).

The haunting image of Olive’s violent death serves as a cautionary tale to Gwendy, who recognizes that prior to her use of the button box, she too was vulnerable to the symbolic pull of the Suicide Steps as evoked in the novella’s opening scene. In contrast to the scene in the arcade in which she remains silent and passive, the grief Gwendy feels over Olive’s death motivates her to action—destroying the site of her friend’s death, protecting future young people vulnerable to its pull, and permanently erasing her complicity.

King and Chizmar choose to reveal the Suicide Steps’ destruction through a newspaper clipping rather than Gwendy’s first-person perspective. The newspaper article explains the accident and ends with a mention of Olive: “Castle View was recently the scene of tragedy when the body of a seventeen-year-old female was discovered at the base of the cliff” (114). This article focuses solely on the Suicide Steps, emphasizing their destruction over the loss of human life, mirroring the disregard and abuse of Olive during her life.

Olive’s death also highlights the importance of genuine female friendship and connection for Gwendy by exposing the shallow quality of many of her other relationships. Her friend Josie brings up Olive’s death by jokingly “humming ‘The Dead March’” (108). Gwendy feels angry at the hypocrisy of the students grieving at Olive’s funeral:

Most of Castle Rock High School is there—teachers and students alike; even Frankie Stone is there, smirking in the back pew—and Gwendy hates them all for showing up. None of them even liked Olive when she was alive. None of them even knew her (115-16).

In many ways, Olive’s death forces Gwendy to reckon with the degree to which the button box prevents her from forming strong, intimate, forcing her to bear The Weight and Isolation of Secrets alone. As the section progresses, Gwendy’s female friendships continue to fracture due to perceived jealousy. For example, her friend Sallie becomes increasingly jealous—and suspicious—of how “perfect” Gwendy is.

The recurring motif of the button box emphasizes the theme of Fate Versus Free Will—raising questions that increasingly preoccupy Gwendy’s thoughts. As Gwendy observes: “Buttons aside, coins aside, little chocolate treats aside, the box has given her…well…powers” (100). Her conflicted feelings about the button box’s power and the ways in which it benefits her deepen her longing for a genuine friendship—the kind she believes she once had with Olive—in which she could confide her fears and doubts:

These realizations are both fascinating and terrifying to Gwendy. She knows it’s the box somehow doing this—or perhaps the chocolate treats—but they really are one and the same. 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).

As her relationship to the box becomes more complicated and fraught, Gwendy finds herself longing for a time before she came into possession of the button box—when she was the person and friend Olive knew. She deepens the distinction between her former self and the version of her she believes the button box created following Olive’s death, viewing her new, popular friends—the ones given to her by the button box—as inauthentic, causing her values and priorities to shift with her progressive loss of innocence as she matures.