Night of the Living Dummy

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"Night of the Living Dummy" is the seventh book in R.L. Stine's popular "Goosebumps" series of scary stories for young people.

The story involves twin sisters, Lindy and Kris Powell, attempting to go into ventriloquism and acquiring two dummies for that purpose. However, strange things involving Kris' dummy, "Mr. Wood", begin to happen around the house. Kris can't bring herself to believe that the dummy itself is responsible for the problems--until, of course, the story inevitably lives up to its title. One of R.L. Stine's favorites, this book is also one of the most memorable and disturbing entries in the Goosebumps series for a variety of reasons.

[edit] Overview

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Like some twins in real life, Kris and Lindy have a rather adversarial relationship. The explanation is that "[T]hey were closer than most sisters ever get...But because they were so much alike, they managed to drive each other crazy a lot of the time" (6). Whether this reasoning fully justifies the intensity of their disagreements is certainly debatable. In any case, the girls find a ventriloquist dummy in a dumpster near their house. To Kris' disdain, Lindy decides to keep him to entertain her friends and names him "Slappy". Lindy's comedy routines become increasingly popular, and Kris feels jealous of the attention. That problem is solved when Mr. Powell buys her a dummy of her own from a pawnshop, and she names him "Mr. Wood".

This is also when the strange occurrences begin. Lindy and Kris come into their bedroom one night to find the dummies lying on the floor, with Mr. Wood's hands around Slappy's neck as though he'd been strangling him. Then Kris finds all the food pulled out of the refrigerator and spilled onto the kitchen floor, and Mr. Wood sitting in the middle of it. Both sisters are punished for the mess. After they clean everything up, Lindy gleefully reveals to Kris that she is responsible for all of the problems thus far. Of course, Kris is very hurt by this, but that realization does not end the story; Kris happens to find a card in Mr. Wood's pocket with some strange words written on it. Unwisely, she reads them aloud, and other things begin happening beyond her control. When she tries to perform her act in front of her elderly neighbors, Mr. Wood yells out vicious insults at them all by himself, and of course everyone thinks Kris was responsible. This is also the situation at a school concert, where Mr. Wood again insults Kris' music teacher and vomits green liquid onto the entire crowd. This leads to Kris being suspended from school.

That night, Kris wakes up and catches Mr. Wood actually walking through the house. He announces that she is his slave, and fights back when she tries to put him in the hall closet. Lindy wakes up, and both girls attempt to physically restrain the dummy. After they are unable to break or kill him, they lock him up in a suitcase and bury it in their yard. They come downstairs the next morning and see Mr. Wood sitting happily at the breakfast table, and as soon as their parents leave to go shopping, the battle begins anew. Mr. Wood wants to get revenge on them by killing their dog Barky, but Lindy and Kris chase him outside into the rain, where two steamrollers are operating on a nearby construction site. Turning to run from the girls again, Mr. Wood is crushed into sawdust by one of the steamrollers, and they are finally rid of the evil dummy. As the thunderstorm intensifies, they go back into the house, and Kris soon discovers that the other dummy, Slappy, is alive as well.

Spoilers end here.

Considering that "Night of the Living Dummy" was written for a juvenile audience, one can understand why some adults objected to the content of Goosebumps books in general (and some schools banned them altogether). The quality of the story is undeniable; the author manages to take the initially silly premise of a ventriloquist dummy coming to life, then carefully molds it into something genuinely scary. The story is well written, the dialogue effective, and the characterization adequate.

However, the subject matter is nearly unrelenting in its ugliness. Lindy callously stands by without a shred of sympathy for her sister's emotional trauma. More than once, Mr. Wood bites and physically strikes Kris as she struggles with him. The descriptions of every disaster involving the dummy are quite vivid, and Mr. Wood's insistence that the girls are his "slaves" comes off as particularly strange. Even in similarly creepy plots or future sequels (there would be three more "Night of the Living Dummy" books written in the series), it can be argued that Stine never quite duplicated the effect of this one, and the dummy soon became one of the most enduring Goosebumps symbols.

[edit] Notes

"Night of the Living Dummy" stands out as one of the best Goosebumps books, with detail and consistency that were conspicuously absent from later entries.

An important theme to take away from the book would be that names and appearances can be deceiving. Lindy and Kris are pretty girls with rather ugly attitudes (though the reader will almost certainly sympathize with Kris). Similarly, Mr. Wood's name is quite silly and lighthearted, while his sadistic actions are anything but.