The Bad Weather Friend

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, and child abuse.

Benny is the protagonist of the novel, and his suffering and losses are the primary focus of the plot. His childhood traumas are revealed through flashback chapters that are interspersed throughout the dominant, present-day narrative. As a seven-year-old boy, Benny witnessed his abusive father’s murder. He then lived with his emotionally abusive grandmother Cosima Springbok, and he was abandoned by his mother on three separate occasions. However, his experiences with the various horrors at Briarbush Academy when he was 13 years old provides the bulk of the content in the flashback chapters.

In the present day, Benny suffers a sudden barrage of inexplicable losses as a direct result of his “niceness,” which the evil Better Kind group find to be threatening and perverse. This niceness is his most prominent character trait. Throughout the novel, Koontz portrays Benny’s Niceness as a Blessing and a Burden. For example, Benny stubbornly retains his niceness as a way to defy the many people and circumstances that cause his suffering. Ultimately, Benny’s character arc is formed not by a shift into cynicism but by the development and application of wisdom, which is necessary to counteract the dangers of being “too nice.