Woven around central themes such as The Nature of Fear and Guilt as Self-Punishment, “The Boogeyman” tells the story of a man who must grapple with monsters both within and outside of himself. The story’s central conflict occurs in the past, with the plot of the present-day timeline being driven by Lester Billings’s desire to tell the story of how his children died. This desire is fueled, at least in part, by the guilt he carries.

One of the first things Lester says to Dr. Harper is that he cannot go to a priest, because he is not Catholic. This invokes the idea of confession, during which believers can admit their sins to a priest and be absolved of them. Lester perceives a therapist as the next best thing. By the end of the story, however, Dr. Harper is unconvinced that Lester wants to relieve his feelings of guilt, suggesting he may be holding on to those feelings to punish himself for killing—or at least failing to save—his children.

In this short story, Stephen King uses foreshadowing, repetition, and a

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