Buster Keeton's delusion about Them

Buster Keeton’s delusion about Them is the persecutory belief that the town is conspiring against him, a conviction that alternately supplies purpose and collapses into despair. Its importance lies in how it helps convert Buster’s private crisis into a destructive public project: after Myrtle Keeton’s death, he first loses his sense of direction, then regains certainty by imagining the townspeople as a collective enemy and becomes absorbed in destroying Castle Rock.

Formation and Shifts

The delusion presents the town not as a collection of individuals but as a threatening whole. Buster thinks that Castle Rock is crawling with Them, and he interprets the imagined group as poised against him. The belief lends his fear a story and an apparent target, giving him a temporary sense that his actions serve a larger purpose.

That apparent clarity is unstable. After he has killed Myrtle, Buster falls into a deep fugue state. The anger that had recently seemed righteous gives way to weariness and depression, and a pounding headache accompanies his loss of purpose. His conviction does not resolve the crisis; it fluctuates with it, alternately organizing his thoughts and leaving him depleted.

Gaunt’s Intervention and Buster’s Response

When Leland Gaunt addresses Buster as Dan, Buster is still caught between his imagined campaign and the impulse to give up. Gaunt responds to Buster’s stated readiness to kill himself by telling him to go ahead, while expressing disappointment that he had thought Buster might help him fight Them. The exchange treats the delusion as a point of leverage: Gaunt frames Buster’s imagined enemies as the basis for renewed action rather than challenging the belief.

Buster then watches the empty street from the study window and senses that the town’s people are gathering against him. The street’s present emptiness does not reassure him; he treats it as temporary, interpreting the perceived threat as massing just beyond view. This moment makes the delusion self-sealing: the absence of visible pursuers can be absorbed into the conviction that they are only waiting.

From Persecution to Destruction

Later, while driving back toward town with Ace Merrill, Buster’s confusion seems to lift. He becomes convinced that he can understand every plan and plot Them have made, and he tells Ace about these supposed machinations as Ace sits in the back of the van connecting Hotpoint timers to blasting caps. His certainty returns not as calm or recovery, but as frantic energy.

The imagined conspiracy also changes its immediate focus. Buster had previously regarded Alan Pangborn as the ringleader of Them, but on the drive he forgets about Alan and becomes absorbed in blowing up Castle Rock, or as much of it as possible. The delusion thus expands beyond suspicion of a particular adversary into a rationale for attacking the town itself. Its movement from personal persecution to collective destruction connects Buster’s private collapse to the larger violence threatening Castle Rock.

Narrative Significance

The belief’s changes expose the gap between Buster’s sense of purpose and the consequences of his actions. He can interpret the town as an enemy, lose that certainty in exhausted despair, and then recover it as a sweeping explanation for supposed plots. Each shift changes what feels possible to him, but none provides a stable understanding of events.

Gaunt’s intervention helps turn that instability toward action, while the return of Buster’s certainty coincides with the preparation of explosives. The delusion is therefore both a symptom of Buster’s deteriorating state and a mechanism through which the town’s disorder becomes actionable: imagined persecution supplies a target, and the target widens until Castle Rock itself is marked for destruction.