Comparing Timmy Baterman to Gage Creed

  • This message board permanently closed on June 30th, 2020 at 4PM EDT and is no longer accepting new members.

jujuhound

Member
Nov 16, 2017
22
79
44
A resurrected Timmy Baterman spends roughly a week walking around Ludlow and living at home with his father. Yet he doesn't kill anybody.

Gage Creed was resurrected for a few hours only to seek out and kill Jud, wait for Rachel then kill her and wait for Louis in an attempt to kill him. Gage/The Wendigo would have viewed Jud as a real threat and wanted revenge from before, which takes him out of the picture but doesn't quite explain being aggressive against Louis or Rachel.

What reason could explain why Timmy never killed Bill Baterman at the very least?
 

Doc Creed

Well-Known Member
Nov 18, 2015
17,221
82,822
47
United States
I believe Jud Crandall tells Louis that Timmy Bateman was the first person buried in the Mic Mac burial ground (that he was aware of) and that the dead "were not the same" when they returned. We know that demons or unclean spirits speak through the reanimated corpses and they know things but we are never given a reason for this abomination, as Jud calls it. "Death is a mystery", King says in the beginning of the book. He also alludes to the stupidity or vacuous nature of evil, it (at least to King) is a mindless force whose greatest objective is not always to kill but to cause torment. Baterman torments his father and others because the demon wants to torment; if Jud hadn't devised a plan to stop it I think Timmy would have eventually turned homicidal. I agree with ghost19 and mal, too, it's probably a combination of these things but not a flaw in the story. The power working through Gage probably had its own agenda although we are never given a reason. My belief is it was the pendulum of revenge swinging back on the mortals who decided to tamper with God-like powers and mysteries. Death is a mystery.
 

Doc Creed

Well-Known Member
Nov 18, 2015
17,221
82,822
47
United States
I believe Jud Crandall tells Louis that Timmy Bateman was the first person buried in the Mic Mac burial ground (that he was aware of) and that the dead "were not the same" when they returned. We know that demons or unclean spirits speak through the reanimated corpses and they know things but we are never given a reason for this abomination, as Jud calls it. "Death is a mystery", King says in the beginning of the book. He also alludes to the stupidity or vacuous nature of evil, it (at least to King) is a mindless force whose greatest objective is not always to kill but to cause torment. Baterman torments his father and others because the demon wants to torment; if Jud hadn't devised a plan to stop it I think Timmy would have eventually turned homicidal. I agree with ghost19 and mal, too, it's probably a combination of these things but not a flaw in the story. The power working through Gage probably had its own agenda although we are never given a reason. My belief is it was the pendulum of revenge swinging back on the mortals who decided to tamper with God-like powers and mysteries. Death is a mystery.

I am a Christian and I believe Jesus' claim that He was the Resurrection and our hope for life after this world, but Louis had no such conviction (he was a doctor, not a man of faith. He could've been both, of course, but King's novel is purposely cold, detached, Shakespearean...like Macbeth) and as a doctor he is naturally intrigued by the science of the burial ground, especially when he sees the result of Ellie's cat return from the grave. It is his clinical mind (as well as the blinding pit of grief) that allows him to be lured back to do what he knows is wrong. At the last page, the only answer the reader has to all these questions is the cold, cruel maw of the grave itself.
 

GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
358,754
62
Cambridge, Ohio
I believe Jud Crandall tells Louis that Timmy Bateman was the first person buried in the Mic Mac burial ground (that he was aware of) and that the dead "were not the same" when they returned. We know that demons or unclean spirits speak through the reanimated corpses and they know things but we are never given a reason for this abomination, as Jud calls it. "Death is a mystery", King says in the beginning of the book. He also alludes to the stupidity or vacuous nature of evil, it (at least to King) is a mindless force whose greatest objective is not always to kill but to cause torment. Baterman torments his father and others because the demon wants to torment; if Jud hadn't devised a plan to stop it I think Timmy would have eventually turned homicidal. I agree with ghost19 and mal, too, it's probably a combination of these things but not a flaw in the story. The power working through Gage probably had its own agenda although we are never given a reason. My belief is it was the pendulum of revenge swinging back on the mortals who decided to tamper with God-like powers and mysteries. Death is a mystery.
...damn fine explanation sir!.....
 
  • Like
Reactions: Doc Creed

GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
358,754
62
Cambridge, Ohio
A resurrected Timmy Baterman spends roughly a week walking around Ludlow and living at home with his father. Yet he doesn't kill anybody.

Gage Creed was resurrected for a few hours only to seek out and kill Jud, wait for Rachel then kill her and wait for Louis in an attempt to kill him. Gage/The Wendigo would have viewed Jud as a real threat and wanted revenge from before, which takes him out of the picture but doesn't quite explain being aggressive against Louis or Rachel.

What reason could explain why Timmy never killed Bill Baterman at the very least?
....possibly a twisted gratitude from the Wendigo, for giving it a vessel to put to it's own evil ends....the earth was sour long, long before the Creed family showed up....and Timmy's story became a hushed cautionary tale even after Papa had killed both his "son" and himself while the fire consumed both....
 
  • Like
Reactions: Doc Creed