“Imaginary Friend” by Stephen Chbosky (post 2): Voices Christopher hears from forrest are integral to story, but voices his mother hears are gratuitous

Seven-year-old Christopher, who had always been a very poor reader due to severe dyslexia, and who had also been very poor at arithmetic, suddenly becomes excellent at both reading and arithmetic.

(In real life, that kind of sudden and extreme change in ability could only happen with a sudden switch from a dysfunctional alternate personality to a highly functional alternate personality.)

Meanwhile, his mother, Kate, wins the lottery, which suddenly takes them from poverty to prosperity. “She felt like it couldn’t have worked out any better if someone had planned it” (1, p. 101). Actually, someone or some thing had planned it: the mysterious forces in the forrest.

Christopher is again drawn to the forrest, this time by an ineffable voice that he experiences telepathically, and with which he enters into dialogue. He thanks the nonvoice voice for getting him and his mother a house (which she has just bought with the lottery money). 

Once he is in the forrest, he hears the voice as a voice, per se. “Are you really real? “yes.” “You’re not a fig newton [figment] of my imagination?” “no.” “So I’m not crazy?” “no.” Why can I hear you now?” “because we’re alone in the woods. that’s why i got you the house [which is adjacent to the woods]. do you like it?” (1, p. 104).

“Christopher sat there for hours. Oblivious to the cold. Talking about everything. With his new best friend. The nice man” (1, p. 105), whose voice seems to emanate from a plastic bag on the branch of a tree.

Meanwhile, unrelated to the forrest, his mother, Kate, has heard a more ordinary kind of voice while she was negotiating with the real estate agent for the new house. This voice, rendered in italics (a common convention for when characters hear voices), gives her ordinary advice: “Slow down, Kate, Ask the questions [that you wanted to ask the real estate agent]” (1, p. 95).

When authors treat hearing voices as ordinary, it may reflect the author’s own psychology.

1. Stephen Chbosky. Imaginary Friend. New York, Grand Central, 2019.