Gwendy's Button Box

“She feels punched in the stomach. ‘Mr. Farris, why did you give this to me? Why me?’

‘Stashed away in this world of ours,’ Farris says, looking down at her, ‘are great arsenals of weapons that could destroy all life on this planet for a million years. The men and women in charge of them ask themselves that same question every day. It is you because you were the best choice of those in this place at this time. Take care of the box. I advise you not to let anyone find it, not just your parents, because people are curious. When they see a lever, they want to pull it. And when they see a button, they want to push it.’

‘But what happens if they do? What happens if I do?’”

Mr. Farris never explicitly tells Gwendy exactly what the buttons on the button box do, underscoring the novella’s thematic interest in Fate Versus Free Will. King and Chizmar imbue Mr. Farris with an omniscient quality—reflected in his knowledge of Gwendy as the best choice to use and guard the box—positioning him in the role of an impartial guide/mentor in the narrative.

“She next considers the attic, but what if her parents finally decide to clean it out and have a yard sale instead of just talking about it? The same is true of the storage space over the garage. Gwendy has a thought (novel now in its adult implications, later to become a tiresome truth): secrets are a problem, maybe the biggest problem of all. They weigh on the mind and take up space in the world.”

While Gwendy is the guardian of the button box, she cannot tell anyone that she has the box. As a result, she is tormented by her dark secret and the effect it has on her friendships and relationships, highlighting the novella’s thematic interest in The Weight of Isolation and Secrets.

“The idea of killing someone (or making them disappear) has kind of gotten lost, but that’s okay with Gwendy. She’s listening, rapt.

‘That’s a very good point,’ Miss Chiles says. ‘Class, what do you think? Would you destroy a place if you could, in spite of the loss of civilian life? And if so, which place, and why?’”

As Gwendy tries to understand the exact capabilities of the button box, she asks her teacher about the ethics of destroying a person or a place. This conversation foreshadows Gwendy’s decision to press the red button on the box and unleash its full power.

“It did this. I don’t know how or why, but it did this. It’s not just me. It’s like a kind of…I don’t know…

‘An umbrella,’ she whispered, and that was just right. An umbrella that could shade her family from too much sun and also keep the rain off. Everything was okay, and as long as a strong wind didn’t come up and blow the umbrella inside out, things would stay okay. And why would that happen? It won’t. It can’t. Not as long as I take care of the box. I have to. It’s my button box now.”

While the button box has the potential for great harm, it also possesses the potential to improve people’s lives. Gwendy’s parents struggle with alcohol misuse and issues in their relationship but once the box comes into Gwendy’s possession these problems dissipate. Gwendy assumes the button box acts with the force of fate, improving things around her and highlighting the novella’s thematic exploration of Fate Versus Free Will.

“And as he screams, she says, How’s that boner now, Frankie Stoner? More like two inches than two feet, I bet. You never should have fucked with the Queen of the Button Box.”

Frankie serves as the primary antagonist for the majority of the novel, and Gwendy’s dream foreshadows his true death at the hands of Gwendy and the button box. In this dream for the first time, Gwendy claims ownership over the button box and its disastrous power by crowning herself the “Queen of the Button Box.”

“He pushes the paper across the table. Gwendy pushes it back, then carefully puts down her fork. She knows she won’t be able to eat another bite, just as she knows without asking that the broken arm Frankie Stone suffered is his left one.”

When Gwendy hears about Frankie’s car accident, she realizes his injuries are eerily similar to the injuries he sustained in her dream. In this way, King and Chizmar reveal that the button box can harm people who are unkind to Gwendy, raising the stakes of the plot.

“Gwendy sits on the bench for a long time, thinking and watching the clouds drift past. After a while, she gets up and jogs down the Suicide Stairs and home again. 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?”

King and Chizmar make their thematic exploration of Fate Versus Free will explicit in Gwendy thoughts as she articulates her confusion about what benefits and accolades she’s earned through talent and what ones the button box got for her. The fact that she can never tell anyone about her worries, also emphasizes The Weight and Isolation of Secrets in her life with the button box.

“She walks behind Mr. Anderson’s desk and carefully studies the map, focusing first on Australia (where, she recently learned, over one-third of the country is desert) before moving on to Africa (those poor folks have enough problems) and finally settling on South America.

From her history notes, Gwendy remembers two important facts that aid this decision: South America harbors thirty-five of the fifty least-developed countries in the world, and a similar percentage of the least-populated countries in the world.

Now that the choice has been made, Gwendy doesn’t waste any time. She scribbles down the names of three small countries in her spiral notebook, one from the north, one from the middle of the continent, and one from the south. Then, she hurries to the library to do more research. She looks at pictures and makes a list of the most godforsaken ones.

Later that afternoon, Gwendy sits down in front of her bedroom closet and balances the button box on her lap.”

Gwendy’s decision to test the button box’s destructive powers marks a turning point in the plot and her character arc, signaling the moment when she moves beyond accepting the box’s chocolate and silver dollar benefits, and into using the box as a weapon to harm others. Gwendy’s painstaking research into the least densely populated areas of the world in order to cause the least harm helps assuage her guilt about her choice, highlighting The Murky Line Between Selfishness and Selflessness. Regardless of her attempts to test the box in ways that do the least harm, she crosses a line that foreshadows the novella’s climax—her murder of Frankie Stone.

“Gwendy returns to her bedroom without comment and slips on tennis shoes and a sweatshirt. She thinks about running Suicide Stairs but decides against it, vaguely afraid of an impulse to throw herself off. Instead, she travels a three-mile loop around the neighborhood, her footsteps slapping a staccato rhythm on the cold pavement, crisp autumn air blushing her cheeks. I did that, she thinks, picturing flies swarming over dead babies. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

King and Chizmar raise the narrative stakes following the Jonestown Massacre as Gwendy becomes convinced that she caused the mass murder because she hit the red button on the button box. This incident haunts her and begins to fracture her relationship with and dependency on the button box.

“She flings herself back on the bed, tears streaming down her face, the hurtful words echoing: You only think about yourself. You’re selfish.

‘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.”

Throughout the novella, Gwendy uses selfishness as a touchstone by which she defines moral uprightness—a benchmark that never proves as clear as she wants, highlighting the novel’s thematic interest in The Murky Line Between Selfishness and Selflessness. As the narrative progresses, Gwendy increasingly seeks to reconcile her personal morality with her decision to use the button box’s destructive powers. The Jonestown Massacre haunts her because she views her decision as an act of selfishness.

“The next night is the prom, and she finds that she actually has to force herself to put on her pink gown and make-up and leave the house. Is this my life now? she thinks as she enters the Castle Rock gym. Is that box my life?”

Gwendy’s growing preoccupation with the box and its influence on her life emphasize The Weight of Isolation and Secrets that takes a significant emotional toll on her. Following her decision to push the red button, Gwendy begins to view the button box as an enemy who controls her life—an attempt to absolve herself from the responsibility of her actions, highlighting the novella’s thematic interest in Fate Versus Free Will.

“Gwendy first realized it was becoming an issue a few months earlier. Yes, she’s a fast runner, maybe the fastest varsity runner in the county. Maybe in the entire state. Really? Yes, really. And then there are her grades. She always earned good ones in school, but in younger years she had to study hard for those grades, and even then, there were usually a handful of B’s, along with all those A’s on her report cards. Now she barely hits the books at all, and her grades are the highest in the whole junior class. She even finds herself writing down the wrong answers from time to time, just to avoid, ho-hum, another perfect test score. Or forcing herself to lose at cards and arcade games just to keep her friends from becoming suspicious. Regardless of her efforts, they know something is weird anyway.

Buttons aside, coins aside, little chocolate treats aside, the box has given her…well…powers.”

Through Gwendy’s internal thoughts, King and Chizmar center the psychological horror of their novella in the warning inherent in all Monkey’s Paw-style narratives: Be careful what you wish for. Although the button box has ostensibly given Gwendy all the things she ever wanted for herself, it also forces her to reckon with her sense of self independent of the box. The fact that she can’t share the true root of these powers with her friends and family also leaves her isolated and alone.

“She tells herself she will press the red button again if she has to and make Three Mile go away. Only Jonestown weighs heavy on her mind. Was that crazy religious fuck going to do it anyway, or did she somehow push him into it? Were the nurses going to poison those babies anyway, or did Gwendy Peterson somehow give them the extra crazy they needed to do it? What if the button box is like the monkey’s paw in that story? What if it makes things worse instead of better? What if she makes things worse?

With Jonestown, I didn’t understand. Now I do. And isn’t that why Mr. Farris trusted me with the box in the first place? To do the right thing when the time came?”

While the Jonestown Massacre weighs heavily on Gwendy, it also helps her understand the weight of her responsibility as the guardian of the button box. As Gwendy begins to wonder if the button box creates bad situations instead of preventing them, her relationship to the box becomes more and more complex.

“She’s halfway across the park before she realizes she doesn’t want to go to the Suicide Stairs at all. In fact, she never wants to see them 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?

Gwendy turns around, climbs back into her cute little Fiesta, and drives home. It occurs to her that she can make damn sure no one jumps from those stairs again.”

Following Olive’s death by suicide, Gwendy feels responsible, primarily because her popularity as a result of the button box drove them apart. However, Olive’s death also helps crystallize a vision for the button box’s destructive powers that aligns with her personal moral code. She decides she must avenge her friend’s death using the button box, destroying the Suicide Steps to prevent anyone else from dying there.

“​​The button box stays hidden in the back of the closet. Gwendy still thinks about it—boy, does she—but she wants nothing to do with it anymore. Not the chocolate treats, not the silver coins, and most of all, not the goddamn buttons. Most days, she hates the box and everything it reminds her of, and she fantasizes about getting rid of it. Crushing it with a sledgehammer or wrapping it up in a blanket and driving it out to the dump. But she knows she can’t do that. What if someone else finds it? What if someone else pushes one of the buttons? She leaves it there in the dark shadows of her closet, growing cobwebs and gathering dust. Let the damn thing rot for all I care, she thinks.”

Olive’s death marks a critical moment in Gwendy’s character arc as she makes a clear choice to distance herself from the button box. Despite her grief-fueled resentment of it, Gwendy cannot bring herself to destroy the box or throw it away. As a result, she chooses to ignore the button box and doesn’t actively use or rely on it anymore.

“Gwendy can’t remember ever being this happy. The button box still surfaces in her thoughts from time to time, but it’s almost as if the whole thing was a dream from her childhood. Mr. Farris. The chocolate treats. The silver dollars. The red button. Was any of it real?

Running, however, is not negotiable. When indoor track season rolls around in late November, Gwendy is ready to rock and roll. Harry is there on the sidelines for every meet, snapping pix and cheering her on. Despite training most of the summer and into the fall, Gwendy finishes a disappointing fourth in Counties and doesn’t qualify for States for the first time in her high school career. She also brings home two Bs on her semester-ending report card in December. On the third morning of Christmas break, Gwendy wakes up and shuffles to the hallway bathroom to take her morning pee. When she’s finished, she uses her right foot to slide the scale out from underneath the bathroom vanity, and she steps onto it. Her instincts are right: she has gained six pounds.”

As Gwendy distances herself from the box and its benefits, the novella explores the relationship between internal contentment and the external pursuit of perfectionism. Gwendy’s journey toward personal contentment and confidence culminates in the loving relationship she shares with Harry. The contentment she’s come to feel in her life allows her to feel less and less need for the benefits the button box brings. Even when some of the powers the button box gave her begin to wear off, her self-confidence and contentment remain since they are no longer rooted in her ability to live up to a perfect standard.

“She’s cradling the button box in her arms like a faithful lover and her right thumb is resting a half-inch from the black button.

She stifles a scream and jerks her hand away, scrambling like a crab out of the closet. A safe distance away, she gets to her feet and notices something that makes her head swim: the narrow wooden shelf on the button box is standing open. On it is a tiny chocolate treat: a parrot, every feather perfect.

Gwendy wants more than anything to run from the room, slam the door behind her, and never return—but she knows she can’t do that. So what can she do?

She approaches the button box with as much stealth as she can muster. When she’s within a few feet of it, the image of a wild animal asleep in its lair flashes in her head, and she thinks: The button box doesn’t just give power; it is power.”

When Gwendy begins to actively ignore the button box to focus on her relationship with Harry, the button box forces her to pay attention to it, highlighting the tendency of power to self-protect. She wakes up with her thumb on the black button, highlighting how much power she—and the button box—have.

“Harry notices none of these things because it’s a gorgeous spring afternoon in Castle Rock and he’s flying a kite with the love of his young life at his side, and everything is perfect.”

Throughout King and Chizmar’s story, the motif of Mr. Farris’s hat represents The Weight of Isolation and Secrets. The fact that Gwendy sees Mr. Farris’s hat as they fly their kite, but Harry doesn’t, points to the burden Gwendy carries, while Harry remains blissfully carefree.

“They’re lying on their stomachs on Gwendy’s bed. Harry is toying with her hair; Gwendy is paging through the glossy Brown catalogue. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson are at dinner with neighbors down the block and not expected back until late. Gwendy and Harry came in an hour ago, and Gwendy was mildly surprised to find she didn’t need to use her key. The front door was not only unlocked but slightly ajar. (Her dad is big on locking up; likes to say Castle Rock isn’t the little country town it used to be.) But everyone forgets stuff, plus Dad’s not getting any younger. And with thoughts of the party to occupy them—not to mention thirty minutes of heaven in her bed beforehand—neither notices a few splinters sticking out around the lock. Or the pry marks.”

By drawing attention to the splinters and pry marks that Gwendy doesn’t notice, King and Chizmar foreshadow the danger waiting for them in her bedroom. Gwendy ultimately blames the button box for Harry’s death, oblivious to the ways her inability to notice dangerous signs contributes to his death.

“‘Did he send you?’ Gwendy asks. She’s sitting on her bottom now, with her feet on the floor and her legs drawn up to hide her breasts. With luck, one look at them is all this sick bastard is going to get. ‘Did Mr. Farris send you to take the box? Did he want you to have it?’ Although the evidence seems to point to this, it’s hard to believe.

He’s frowning. ‘Mr. who?’

‘Farris. Black suit? Little black hat that goes wherever it wants to?’

“‘I don’t know any Mr. F—’

That’s when she lashes out, once again not thinking…although later it will occur to her that the box might have been thinking for her. His eyes widen and the hand holding the knife pistons forward, driving through her foot and coming out the other side in a bouquet of blood. She shrieks as her heel slams into Frankie’s chest, driving him back into the closet. She snatches up the box, and at the same time she pushes the red button, she screams, ‘Rot in hell!’”

In the novella’s climactic scene, Gwendy begins to blur the lines between herself and the button box—wondering if the box is “thinking for her.” She also begins to overtly view Mr. Farris and, by extension the box, as an arbiter of fate. She asks Frankie if Mr. Farris sent him to take the button box, suggesting she believes that something this bad could only happen to her if Mr. Farris and the button box ordained it.

“She falls silent, remembering how Frankie’s face began to turn black, how his eyes first went cloudy and then lolled forward in their sockets. How his mouth drooped, the lower lip unrolling like a shade with a broken spring. His scream—surprise? agony? both? she doesn’t know—that blew the teeth right out of his putrefying gums in a shower of yellow and black. His jaw tearing loose; his chin falling all the way down to his chest; the ghastly ripping sound his neck made when it tore open. The rivers of pus from his cheeks as they pulled apart like rotting sailcloth—”

Frankie’s death provides one of the most elaborate and ornate descriptions in the novella, underscoring his role as the antagonist. His murder of Harry and attempted rape of Gwendy also positions his death as an act of both self-defense and vengeance.

“‘The red button is very…versatile, shall we say? Yes, let’s say that. But in ten years you only pushed it a few times, showing you to be a person of strong will and stronger restraint. I salute you for that.’ And he actually does, with his glass of milk.

‘Even once was too much,’ she says. ‘I caused Jonestown.’

‘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.’”

Gwendy’s final conversation with Mr. Farris highlights the novel’s nuanced exploration of Fate Versus Free Will, absolving Gwendy of guilt for many of the evils for which she believed herself (via the button box) responsible. Instead, Mr. Farris points to the people behind the tragedies—for example, Jim Jones and Olive—instead of Gwendy.

“I’ve said enough. Any more, and I’ll bend the course of your future, so please don’t tempt me. I might give in if you did, because I like you, Gwendy. Your proprietorship of the box has been…exceptional. I know the burden it’s been, sometimes like carrying an invisible packsack full of rocks on your back, but you will never know the good you’ve done. The disasters you’ve averted. When used with bad intent—which you never did, by the way, even your experiment with Guyana was done out of simple curiosity—the box has an unimaginable capacity for evil. When left alone, it can be a strong force for good.”

Before taking the button box from her, Mr. Farris compliments Gwendy for her steadfast guardianship of the button box, suggesting that the button box provides a kind of litmus test of personal, moral character. In contrast to Gwendy’s image of the box as a divine arbiter of fate, Mr. Farris frames the box as a powerful tool that reveals the true moral fiber of the person in possession of it.