“The Only Lesson Is To Run” — The Absurdism Of Childhood In R.L. Stine’s ‘Goosebumps’ (1992-1997)

According to Goosebumps author R.L. Stine, his long-running children’s horror series contains no moral messages or themes. In an interview for The Guardian, he states: “I don’t try to put any messages in these books: the only lesson is to run. Adults have the right to read something just for fun, and I’ve always thought kids had the same right.”¹ Indeed, kids have been drawn to Goosebumps since its inception in July 1992.

Since then, the series has earned its place as the second-highest-selling book series of all time. But despite its popularity, Goosebumps has faced much criticism. At the forefront of this criticism is the series’ perceived lack of literary value for young readers.

In her essay “The ‘Goosebumps’ in Goosebumps: Impositions and R. L. Stine,” writer Vicki Coppell likens the books to junk food: “easily accessible, widely consumed, simply structured, predictable, and repetitious.”² On one level, Coppell’s assessment isn’t entirely inaccurate. The Goosebumps books are short and formulaic. Their popularity in the 1990s was driven in part by a trend.

But Coppell and others like her fail to recognize another reason Goosebumps captivated children: the chance to see themselves as the hero. Through its distinct blend of horror and comedy, Goosebumps captured the absurdity of adolescence — and growing up in a world that can be indifferent and terrifying.

The World Is A Scary Place — Growing Up In Goosebumps

In an article for The New York Times, R.L. Stine stresses the importance of Goosebumps as an avenue for kids to conquer their fears. He writes: “The goal really isn’t to terrify them. I want to give them a creepy adventure in which they confront monsters… and triumph over them.”³ By centering children as the protagonists of his stories, Stine’s characters became a stand-in for his readers.

Most Goosebumps protagonists fall in the age range of eleven to twelve years old, only slightly older than the series’ main demographic. In building their arc, Stine gives his characters a level of independence, placing them at odds with the world around them. Goosebumps protagonists regularly clash with bullies, annoying siblings, and even their own parents.

In an interview with Wicked Horror, Stine states: “They’re just normal kids, and they’re facing some horrible dilemma. And they have to get out of it on their own. And the parents either don’t believe them… or they’re totally incompetent.”⁴ In this regard, the Goosebumps books portray a coming-of-age just as much as they do a conquering of fears, but childhood in Stine’s world is one shaped by absurdism.

Popularized by philosopher Albert Camus, absurdism is defined as “the conflict between humankind’s seeking a meaning for life and the inability to find it.”⁵ It may seem absurd in itself to consider a series like Goosebumps through this lens, but one must consider how much adolescence is defined by a search for meaning.

The protagonists of Goosebumps often find themselves in periods of transition. Common tropes in the series include moving into a new house or staying somewhere unfamiliar, such as with a relative or at a summer camp. These scenarios are ones familiar to children, allowing Stine to flip them into horror easily. As a result, moments of self-discovery come paired with the revelation that the world is often illogical.

How Stine’s World Defies The Rational

Be it werewolf, ghost, or any other monster, Goosebumps protagonists are never believed by their parents. Their encounters with the supernatural are discredited, often chalked up to being a lie, or a product of their imagination.

The three Living Dummy books perhaps exemplify this best. Beginning with Night of the Living Dummy (1993), each installment pairs a new protagonist with Slappy, an evil ventriloquist’s dummy that comes to life upon recitation of the magic words: “Karru Marri Odonna Loma Molonu Karrano.” Slappy’s main goal is to enslave the protagonist.

To get what he wants, the dummy commits cruel pranks. He vandalizes the house. He tells mean jokes when the protagonist is performing. It’s they who wind up blamed for everything.

The disbelief of parents drives the conflict of many Goosebumps stories. In The Girl Who Cried Monster (1993), Lucy Dark, who is always telling monster stories, is not believed when she witnesses her librarian, Mr. Mortman, transform into a creature. In Piano Lessons Can Be Murder (1993), protagonist Jerry Hawkins’ parents dismiss his claims of a ghost haunting the piano he found in the attic. In Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes (1995), Joe Burton is blamed for the antics of the titular gnomes.

Of course, the parents live in a world of logic. Dummies and gnomes shouldn’t be alive. According to Albert Camus, people begin their lives with myths of how the world works. They “explain things such as what the world is, how it came to be, and what a person’s basic relationship to it is.”⁶ However, life experiences can shatter these illusions, exposing us to the absurd. This is precisely what happens to Goosebumps’ many protagonists.

Oftentimes, the absurdity of Goosebumps monsters comes from a transformation of the mundane, such as the Grool in It Came From Beneath the Sink! (1995), a sponge-like monster that feeds on bad luck. In other times, protagonists find themselves in environments that defy logic, such as the forest ruled by game-playing monsters in The Beast from The East (1996), or the mechanical woods of Legend of the Lost Legend (1996).

Stine’s books regularly blur reality. A prominent entry, One Day at HorrorLand (1994), features an amusement park where what’s real and what’s entertainment is hard to distinguish. Another theme-park-based story, A Shocker on Shock Street (1995) has two children test an attraction where movie monsters come to life.

In Attack of the Mutant (1994) and The Blob That Ate Everyone (1996), fictional monsters emerge into reality. In Attack of the Mutant, it’s a comic book villain known as The Masked Mutant, while The Blob That Everyone features a typewriter that makes everything the protagonist writes come true, including a monstrous blob.

In all aforementioned cases, the horror comes from the breakdown of normalcy. In Welcome to Camp Nightmare (1993), protagonist Billy attends Camp Night Moon. When campers start to go missing, the staff pretends as though they never existed. In this book, Billy’s expectations for the adult world are challenged. They aren’t protective; they’re hiding something.

A similar idea shapes the plot of Stay Out of The Basement (1992). Here, Margaret and Casey Brewer are left home alone with their botanist father. Normally a kind man, Dr. Brewer acts cold towards his children.

He spends his time isolated in the basement. Once again, Stine plays with the idea of how an authority figure should act and the fear of when that expectation is broken. It’s an idea which exemplifies absurdism: expecting rationality, but finding none.

Embracing The Absurd — Understanding Goosebumps’ Twist Endings

Through their encounters with the supernatural, the protagonists of Goosebumps learn to accept what would otherwise be irrational. It would be remiss, however, not to discuss how many of these stories end. The Goosebumps books are known for their twist endings. These endings serve to shock the reader, but many of them also recontextualize their stories. For instance, The Girl Who Cried Monster‘s ending reveals Lucy and her family are also monsters.

Other books follow suit, with A Shocker on Shock Street revealing its protagonists as robots, Attack of the Mutant turning its main character into a comic book hero, and Blob ultimately being a story written by a monster narrator. In Welcome to Camp Nightmare, Billy’s ordeal is unveiled as an elaborate test. His family is preparing him for their journey to planet Earth.

These endings represent a “new normal” for the protagonist. They live with the knowledge that the supernatural exists, or that they themselves are inhuman. Many of these conclusions are treated with acceptance rather than fear, like Grady Tucker of The Werewolf of Fever Swamp‘s (1993) status as the new werewolf, or Gary Lutz in Why I’m Afraid of Bees (1994) retaining some insect qualities.

Camus believed that the only way to “rebel” against the meaninglessness of the universe was to embrace it. In his book The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus compared the human ordeal to the Greek myth of Sisyphus⁷, who was punished by the gods to roll a boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down again. By comparison, Camus argued, our lives are just as absurd:

“Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday according to the same rhythm…”⁸

Sisyphus’ fate may seem cruel. In a similar vein, so do the fates of many Goosebumps protagonists. The twelfth entry in the series, Be Careful What You Wish For… (1993) features an ending often considered unfair to its protagonist, Samantha Byrd. In the story, Samantha is a klutz bullied by her classmate, Judith. Samantha ends up encountering a witch named Clarissa, who grants her three wishes. The wishes all end up going awry, leading to Samantha wishing Judith had met the witch instead. In turn, Judith wishes for Samantha to “fly away”, ending the book with Samantha transformed into a bird.

Troy Steele of the now-defunct Blogger Beware, known for its more critical retrospective of the Goosebumps series, wrote of the book: “The finale, with its completely unfair and entirely out of proportion punishment, remains the single greatest reminder of why kids everywhere loved these books.”⁹

Steele assesses here that children loved Goosebumps for, not in spite of, its often dark endings. And yet the ending of Be Careful What You Wish For… succinctly captures Camus’ philosophy for rebelling against an indifferent universe: embracing the absurd.

“Camus asks us to once again consider Sisyphus – this time not as a victim to be pitied, but as a hero to be admired. Despite it all, Camus tells us, Sisyphus just keeps on going.”¹⁰ More than this, Camus wanted to imagine Sisyphus as happy. Despite her transformation, Samantha Byrd is shown to be happy, too. She remarks:

“I suddenly felt so different. Lighter. Happier. Let Judith have her wishes! I thought gleefully. Let her see what it’s like!… I fluttered my wings, testing the wind. Then I took off, flying low over the woods.”¹¹

Samantha is free from being victimized by Judith. She lives despite the twist ending, embracing her new normal. For Camus, this is how we should act in the face of the absurd. But in Goosebumps, it’s a critical part of growing up.

Laughing In The Face Of Horror — Finding Meaning In Goosebumps

R.L. Stine has often compared Goosebumps to a thrill ride, particularly regarding his blend of humor and horror. In an interview with Time, he states: “Anytime a scene gets really intense, I throw in something funny. And of course there’s a punchline at the end of every chapter.”¹² Furthermore, Stine posits his books as a divorce from “real-world horrors” like child abuse, drugs, and gun violence. As a result, his stories stay thrilling, whilst remaining safe for kids.

It’s no secret that many Goosebumps books are intended to be humorous. Titles like It Came From Beneath the Sink! are indicators alone. Stine’s use of levity offers another window into the appeal of Goosebumps: it allowed kids to laugh at their fears.

The value of Goosebumps, then, is found less in its morals and more in the meaning its young readers derive from it. Was R.L. Stine intentionally following the philosophy of Albert Camus? Likely not, but his books capture an absurdism familiar only to children.

The protagonists of Goosebumps find themselves searching for meaning. They hold to beliefs about the ways in which the world, particularly the adult world, should work. The series’ many monsters serve to disrupt these notions, exposing the world as frightening and illogical. Stine ties these moments of revelation with his characters’ independence, marking Goosebumps’ absurdity as crucial to the protagonists’ development.

But Goosebumps encourages its readers not to merely accept the world as irrational, but to live despite it. Just as Camus advised, Stine’s audience embraced the absurd. The books flew off shelves, showing that kids could see their everyday terrors portrayed on the page and find humor in them.

They followed Stine’s advice exactly. They ran, not away from their fears, but right towards them. And there’s a thrill to be found in running.

Footnotes

1. Bromwich, Kathryn. “Goosebumps Author RL Stine: ‘the Only Lesson in My Books Is to Run.’” The Guardian. 11 Jul. 2021. ↩︎
2. Coppell, Vicki. “The ‘Goosebumps’ in Goosebumps: Impositions and R. L. Stine.” 1998. ↩︎
3. Stine, R.L. “Real-Life Goosebumps: What Scares R.L. Stine, a Master of Fear?” The New York Times, 11 Jun. 2024. ↩︎
4. Ruszin, Ricky. “R.L. Stine on the Magic of a Perfect ‘Goosebumps’ Title, and the ‘Bloodbath’ of ‘Fear Street: Prom…” Wicked Horror. 3 Mar. 2025. ↩︎
5. Gunson-McComb, Hannah. “What Is Absurdism, Anyway?” 4th Wall Dramaturgy. Brigham Young University. 23 Mar. 2019. ↩︎
6. “Camus on the Sense and Role of the Absurd.” Wheaton College.  ↩︎
7. Van Aken, Erik. “Camus on the Absurd: The Myth of Sisyphus.” 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. 2 May 2019. ↩︎
8. Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus, J.O’Brien (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2018. ↩︎
9. Steele, Troy. “R-E-T-R-O-S-P-E-C-T, Find out What It Means to Me.” Blogger Beware Annotated.
   ↩︎
10. Maden, Jack. “Camus on Coping with Life’s Absurdity.” Philosophybreak.com. Sep. 2024. ↩︎
11. Stine, R.L. Be Careful What You Wish For…, Scholastic. 1993. ↩︎
12. Cipriani, Casey. “R.L. Stine Is Still out Here Scaring Kids 30 Years after Launching Goosebumps.” TIME. 24 Jun. 2022 ↩︎