Imaginary Friend and the Not-So-Imaginary Battle - An Allegorical Commentary on "Imaginary Friend" by Stephen Chbosky

Guest post by Heather Stolfa, edited by Haley Haskin

A note from Haley

The following article is a thoughtful and in-depth exploration of Stephen Chbosky’s Imaginary Friend, guest-starred by my sister on the blog! She takes readers beyond the thrilling plot to uncover the rich symbolism and Christian allegorical themes woven throughout the novel. Whether you’ve read the book or are curious about its deeper messages, this analysis offers a fresh perspective on the spiritual battle between good and evil, the power of choice, and the lessons that linger long after the last page is turned.

DISCLAIMER: THIS ANALYSIS CONTAINS SPOILERS

Whenever someone asks me for a stand-alone book recommendation, I know confidently where to point them. Stephen Chbosky has crafted a thrilling, but also thematically rich novel that is sure not to disappoint lovers of fiction or thriller. Imaginary Friend is an epic depiction of good versus evil with chilling imagery and eerie cliffhangers that will have your heart racing by the end.

The book follows young Christopher Reese and his mother Kate Reese as they move to a small town in Pennsylvania for a fresh start after a fair share of relational and financial struggles. Only a couple of chapters in, Christopher is lead into Mission Street Woods and isn’t seen again for six days. He re-emerges from the woods changed, but with no memory of what happened to him there. Christopher, a once dyslexic student who fell behind in all subjects, suddenly finds himself breezing through assignments, acing math tests, and reading full chapter books at record speed. In a not-so-incidental turn of events, Kate Reese wins the lottery by playing the answers to Christopher’s math test, pays off their debt, and moves them to a new house, which so happens to be right next to the Mission Street Woods. Over the coming weeks, Christopher is plagued by an itch, and begins sneaking into the woods at night with instructions from his new imaginary friend, “the nice man,” to build a treehouse that he must finish before Christmas Day. After painstakingly finishing the project, Christopher enters the treehouse, and his spirit is transported to the “imaginary world” where he finally meets the nice man face to face. He returns from this venture all-knowing: afflicted with an onslaught of passing thoughts of the people around him, and a whole new list of physical ailments to go with it. Despite downing aspirin by the bottle, his trips to the imaginary side are the only thing that make his now constant headaches go away, but he is warned not to go in at night and to stay on the street to avoid an encounter with the hissing lady, an enemy to the nice man who has been spreading a whisper through town that “death is coming. Death is here. We’ll die on Christmas day”. It isn’t long before this anthem starts to seem plausible, as the itch that Christopher brought back from the woods spreads to the rest of the town in the form of blistered skin, headaches, and fevers, all commonly accompanied by obsessive and insatiable thoughts that keep them up at night. These ailments are only the beginning of the full-blown spiritual war that is about to overtake Mill Grove, Pennsylvania.

At a colossal 700 pages, the climax lasting for roughly 250 of them, this book is exhausting to say the least. A slow-burn unraveling, it feels like a dread induced turn over your shoulder that offers none of the instant relief an alternately quick jump scare might. At points it can start to feel like the reader may, quite literally, never make it out of the woods; but the length shouldn’t be mistaken for slowness, as every page is densely packed. Rather the pacing demands that the reader’s trek is just as taxing as the character’s they are journeying alongside, as their inner thoughts spiral into madness. As Chbosky describes it: we are frogs in a pot of water, not noticing that the heat is being slowly turned up to lethal temperatures until it is too late. Though the reader is certainly rewarded for their grit, they should be prepared to feel almost as mentally and emotionally drained as the characters themselves by the end.

Despite its pacing being arguably slower than our modern attention spans are accustomed to, Imaginary Friend is immediately enticing with its unnerving style and truly horrific imagery. Stephen Chbosky is an expert at leaving the reader frozen on the page. He evokes visions that nightmares are made of utilizing subverted innocence, the fear of what is unknown lurking in the shadows, and shapeshifting of things that are normal one minute and morph into something mockingly twisted the next. His juxtaposed descriptions like “a smile gone sick”, alongside his grotesque choice of adjectives that seem almost misplaced – for example, the “smack” of a grandma’s kiss to describe feet hitting the pavement – add to the general unease of these nightmarish moments. Not to mention his unsettling use of italics, capitalization, and font changes that subtly but faithfully cue the reader when something is. off. His ability to induce dread with one-word sentences is uncanny, even sometimes dedicating entire pages to single words for emphasis. This, coupled with his exaggerated use of onomatopoeia such as the “WAAAAA!” of a baby cry, the “hissssssing” of the wind, or the “crreeaaakk” of a tree branch, ensure that the reader knows when something isn’t quite right. What makes the writing even more disturbing is the nonchalant tone in which it is delivered, as though the terrors being commented on were as commonplace as the Mill Grove weather. In this same understated style, Chbosky keeps the reader turning pages with chapter endings that wait until the very last sentence to matter-of-factly put two and two together, letting the reader’s imagination do the heavy lifting of envisioning the horrors to follow.

However, two thirds of the way through the book, the reader comes to realize this isn’t just a nightmarish thriller with things that go bump in the night, but a full-blown illustration of the spiritual realm and the battle of good versus evil that rages around us. Amidst the climax of the book, Christopher notices things may not be as they seem. The script is flipped, and he realizes the “imaginary world” is actually Hell, the “nice man” is the devil, and the hissing lady, (who is revealed to be Eve from the garden of Eden) is actually one of the good guys, offering her eternal afterlife in service as a guardian to keep the devil in hell. As Christopher becomes wise of the situation, the veil is lifted from his eyes and the horrors of hell are revealed for what they truly are. Christopher learns that the perceived horrors of the hissing lady were really efforts to help that had been twisted by the devil. He realizes that the scary people he thought were agents of the hissing lady, are actually souls trapped in hell. When things are brought to light, he finally understands their moans and screams; they are not directed at scaring him, but are pleading “please, make it stop!” as they continually hurt themselves by being forced to relive their worst moments over again for eternity. We discover that the “nice man” has been using Christopher to build the treehouse in efforts to shatter the glass between their worlds, framing the hissing lady as the one behind it all in hopes the Christopher would project his enmity on and kill her, finally allowing him to escape his prison. Once this context of the story is revealed, the reader is immediately left wanting to retrace the pages for clues that things, once again, were not as they seemed.

While set against a fictional backdrop, this grand epic of good versus evil challenges the reader to step back and acknowledge the presence of the spiritual battle that rages on in the real world. The book is full of symbols and themes that comment on the spiritual warfare in the soul. One of the most obvious symbols is the tree in which Christopher builds his tree house. Described as an arthritic hand reaching out of the ground with bark that feels like human flesh and set in a clearing the resembles a giant eye from above, the reader eventually concludes it is none other than the tree of knowledge of good and evil. At the end of the book, we discover that this is where Christopher was kept during his six-day hiatus, explaining how he returned to the world omniscient. The treehouse was making him like God, but this power came at a price. Because humans are not designed to be like God, Christopher’s physical body could not handle the power. He paid with extreme exhaustion, uncurable headaches, and a fever that could melt ice upon contact, not to mention the emotional weight of carrying around everyone’s pain and hardships. It is interesting to note that the tree of knowledge, the object of humanity’s original sin, is set as the centerpiece of the devil’s lair. It was the source of his first successful lie to humanity: that becoming like God would be good for us. Since human error is the best hope he has, he uses this first foothold to serve as the portal to the material world. Another nod to this is the repetition of the number 2:17 throughout the book, which in Genesis reads: “but you must not eat from the tree of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” 

Now onto the devil himself. Living up to his title as the “father of lies,” (John 8:44) he masquerades to Christopher as “the nice man,” a friend who wants to keep Christopher safe. He is crafty, sneaky, and manipulative, using flattery and inducing pity to appeal to Christopher’s good character and ensure that he remains committed to constructing the tree house despite the pain it causes him on the real side. He even goes as far as framing himself as the victim of the hissing lady, so that Christopher’s fear will be redirected away from him and onto his enemy. It is an expertly spun web of lies, one that sounds a little too familiar. Looking to Genesis in the bible we see the same extremity of lies at work on Adam and Even in the garden. The serpent starts by coaxing Eve to question the boundaries that were set (“Did God really say…?” Gen 3:1) and then proceeds to tell a flat out lie (“You will not certainly die…” Gen 3:4). He then further tempts her, saying if she eats from the forbidden tree, she will be like God, awakened to the knowledge of good and evil. He masterfully stacks these tactics on top of each other until Eve bends to his will, just like Christopher.

We not only see the Devil at work in Christopher, but eventually in the whole town. The book is narrated by many different members of the Mill Grove community, bouncing from perspective to perspective by chapter, page, or even paragraph as the stories become more intertwined. A large chunk of narrative is delivered through these characters’ inner thoughts in lieu of dialogue. Chbosky laces these inner monologues with ideas quite literally itching to be brought to the surface, hinting at significance through sneaky repetition disguised as intrusive thoughts within the character’s stream of consciousness. Tapping. Prodding. Scratching on the souls of the community. Preying on the demons in their closets and stirring up hatred, fear, and vengeance in their hearts. We later discover these intrusive thoughts are the devil’s whisperings. Chbosky personifies these whisperings as an itch that no amount of lotion or cream can alleviate. It spreads rapidly to those with whom Christopher comes in contact (emphasizing how evil spreads like a disease). It is persistent and keeps them up at night, egging them on as they stew over their grievances with life. This voice is one we may have heard before. It starts as a whisper, a hint of an idea, and gains power as we entertain it. The devil’s schemes often seem to start as harmless nudges and may even sometimes come disguised as our own ideas. But we are told in Ephesians that all the devil needs is a foothold. He only needs us to take the bait and entertain the thought long enough for him to take hold and begin dragging us down the path of destruction. “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:15). Once we scratch the itch, it spreads like wildfire.

The devil uses this kindling of animosity to strike a match on the unsuspecting town. He then deploys his next most reliable tactic: distraction. Mill Grove is plunged into chaos as sickness and selfishness take root. Grocery store shelves are wiped clean, traffic horns blare on the streets, and the hospital waiting rooms bristle with arguments from feverish patients and eventually victims of the hate crimes that ensue once the citizens’ anger is allowed to reign unchecked. Everyone becomes so preoccupied with the maladies right in front of them that no one steps back to see the devastation that has taken shape. The few that grow suspicious of what is happening are immediately targeted by the enemy, like the sheriff for example, whose fever and brain-fog have confused him to the point that he keeps falling asleep while trying to crack the case. Just like the people of Mill Grove, it is easy for us to get swept up in the details of life, not noticing we are being led astray until we are stranded in the deep end. As we see in Imaginary Friend, the devil has no power of his own, but is prepared to use anyone and anything he can get his hands on to do his bidding for him, tightening his grip if he senses us starting to fight it. When the nice man’s true identity is finally outed, and he comes to the realization that Christopher is no longer on his side, he quickly changes the trajectory of his lies to the townspeople and plants in them the biggest lie yet: that Christopher is the one to blame for their torment: “goD iS a murdereR,” “kill goD anD youR freE” (p. 663, 664), thus pitting them against Christopher in a quick shift of tactics. In line with his writing style, Chbosky begins referring to the devil as hEonce his identity is revealed, the opposite of the capitalized He for God in scripture, emphasizing his opposition with God.

If what we see overtaking the townspeople of Mill Grove is the onset of spiritual warfare, then the mailbox people represent the hopelessness that enslaves if these inner demons are left unchecked. The mailbox people are souls that line the streets of the imaginary world perhaps representing a sort of limbo in between of Heaven and Hell. They are all joined together by a string in their hands, their eyes and mouths sewn shut. As the worlds begin to merge, the townspeople are lured into the woods and begin sewing their own eyes and mouths shut. Having been fully brainwashed by the devil, they join the ranks of the mailbox people, enslaved and silenced. At first, Christopher perceives their stifled moans as evil groanings, until his eyes are opened and he realizes they are all simply saying, “help me.” Christopher tells them to let go of the string, saying “you are free now.” And then they are. We see that they were holding themselves there, slaves to what they thought was their only choice. Their stitched mouths kept them suffering in silence, where evil does its best work. Once the string is cut and the truth brought to light, they are no longer captives. We can draw a similar parallel to our lives without Jesus. As we see in Romans 6, when we let sin rule in our lives, we become enslaved by it, but Jesus graces us with the truth: in Him, we are free – no longer slaves to sin but to righteousness. We can drop the string of sins that keep us bound to our old ways and become who we were created to be in Him.

One character in particular, Mary Katherine, represents how we can be targeted by the devil and chained by our sins in an arguably more insidious way. A textbook catholic schoolgirl, Mary Katherine’s mind is a spiritual battlefield, with voices bickering in her head so intensely we can almost picture a little angel and devil sitting on each shoulder. She lives her life bound in fear of displeasing God, white knuckling her thoughts and actions into line to win his favor, and ever chastising herself when her thoughts inevitably circle back to those of the flesh. As Romans 7:23 puts it: “I see another law at work within me, waging war against my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” She is a first-rate example of the trap many fall into: mistaking that good works are what earn God’s grace instead of accepting grace as a gift that changes our hearts to then carry out good works. At the end of the book, Mary Katherine has a revelation that the voice that has been whispering to her that she doesn’t measure up and never will is not the Holy Spirit at all, but the devil. In this moment her attitude towards God shifts from fear to love, and she is immediately set free from her prison of inner torment as she surrenders to the fact that she doesn’t measure up, but Jesus does. “Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25).

Lastly, if the nice man is the devil, Christopher is the town’s savior. Mirroring attributes of Jesus, Christopher’s character is described from the beginning as inherently good. We see this in the way he interacts with his mother and his friends, always striving to protect them and put their needs over his. As discussed before, his interaction with the tree of knowledge has made him omniscient, or as the book puts it, “the treehouse makes you God” (p. 436). With this omniscience, he takes on the emotional weight of the world, much like Jesus took on every sin on the cross. Later in the story we see him free the mailbox people by telling them they are free. The gospel tells us the same: “ ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’”(John 8:32). At the very end of the story, as Christopher is trying to escape from hell, he realizes that he doesn’t need the key he has been chasing to enter back through the portal, but that he is the key, because he holds the power of God, which is love. In this moment of realization and an overwhelming flood of love, he tells the devil that he forgives him. These words send light pouring through the now open portal, ultimately freeing Christopher from hell and the devil’s grip. This parallel is certainly the loosest of them all in that it is impossible for any man to fully resemble Jesus, but it does place the emphasis on the need for a savior. Just like us, the mailbox people are unable to save themselves. They need Christopher to save them just like we need Jesus to save us from an eternity of death.

These are just a few of the plethora of symbols in the book that relate to the over-arching theme of spiritual warfare. Other notable motifs worth looking into are the clouds, deer, and baby teeth that keep cropping up to draw connections across the story. However, while there are many allusions that can be traced to Christian theology, this book is clearly fiction and is by no means a perfect parallel, nor is it meant to be. In fact, there are plenty of plot points that could be considered questionable or even sacrilegious if that was the point of the book. The book does an excellent job, however, at what is sets out to do, which is to create an illustration of how real and, yes, insidious, spiritual warfare can be. It may not take the form of an imaginary friend in a tree house, but I believe that the whispers in the ear, the lies in our heads, the demons preying on our guilt, stirring up hatred and division, feeding on the shadows our silence, are as real as anything. These musings, when personified, may have us looking over our shoulder at night for good reason. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion waiting for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The good news is we needn’t fear because “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4). Just as goodness and love ultimately prevail through Christopher in Imaginary Friend, so we are protected one-hundredfold in the name of Jesus.

Imaginary Friend is not a book that one can easily forget. It imprints images on your mind that will stick with you long after you’ve turned the last page. Years after my initial read, my mind may still flicker back to it when I see, say, a plastic bag caught on a limb, a certain shaped cloud, or an exceptionally gnarly looking tree. It is spooky and spine-tickling, but it goes much deeper than your average thriller novel. It takes you on a well-invested journey and pulls you in so deeply both emotionally and physically that you almost feel it is you that has fought the battle alongside the characters by the end. A dense epic, packed full of symbolism and haunting imagery, Imaginary Friend is a novel that can be read, re-read, and dissected over and over qualifying it as a new staple for the shelves of literature lovers. read it.