The following is in response to Stephen King’s book “Firestarter” and his novella with Richard Chizmar “Gwendy’s Button Box”.
Firestarter depicts a father’s journey to keep his daughter safe even when he is not with her. So what he is keeping her safe from? Well in a way he has to keep her safe from herself because she has the ability to start fires on command with her mind.* As you can imagine, the government would be very interested in harvesting said powers to use for their own agenda and these military officials are the other thing the father in our story must keep his daughter, charlie, safe from.
In the novella, Gwendy is given a box with buttons on it as a gift from a stranger in a black hat. One of the buttons (well a lever actually) gives her a small chocolate that will keep her hunger down and her energy up. Gwendy eats one of the magic chocolates every day until the box is taken away from her and she becomes the most beautiful and popular girl in her school. Another lever dispenses a silver dollar worth a lot of money to collectors and over the years she builds up quite the stack of cash, which she uses to pay for college. Of course there is a price to all of this good button-box-fortune. When Gwendy decides to stop using the button box, some of her loved ones begin to die, including one of her childhood friends and her boyfriend.
In both stories, a young girl is given a great power—Charlie’s comes genetically from her parents and Gwendy’s is bestowed upon her by a mysterious stranger. King seems to be saying that with great power comes great responsibility and nothing in life is free.
*That’s telekinesis Kyle! Yep, that’s a Tenacious D song reference. I’m sure all of you got that without me having to explain it, right?
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