# Needful things?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/needful-things/338588
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [January 5, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/needful-things/338588 "2006-01-05T16:42:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/needful-things/338588/1 "2006-01-05T16:42:20Z")
This was posted in the “ominous quotes” thread…
“When I started out I was just a peddler moving across the blind face of a distant land. Moving, always moving. Always gone… and in the end I’d always offer weapons. And they’d always take them. Of course I was gone before they realized what they’d purchased.” - Leland Gaunt, Needful Things
What is Needful things about? This quote just begs an explanation. Please tell me all about it!
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### Author:  [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/needful-things/338588/2 "2006-01-05T17:09:58Z")
It’s been a while since I saw the movie (and I’ve never read the book), but basically, there’s a Smiling Saleman (who may or may not be the Devil) who offers anything you want, but at a price. Eventually, the whole town turns against each other due to the Saleman’s machinations. I think the good guys do sort of triumph in the end, but I don’t recall how exactly.
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### Author:  [@Beadalin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beadalin)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/needful-things/338588/3 "2006-01-05T17:14:16Z")
Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve read it, too, so here’s the plot synopsis from Amazon:
> [@](#):
>
> A new store, Needful Things, opens in town, and its proprietor, Leland Gaunt, offers seemingly unbeatable (read: Faustian) bargains to Castle Rock’s troubled citizens. Among them are Polly Chalmers, lonely seamstress whose arthritis is only one of the physical and psychic pains she must bear; Brian Rusk, the 11-year-old boy whose mother is not precisely attentive; and Alan Pangborn, the new sheriff whose wife and son have recently died. These are only three of the half-dozen or so brilliantly drawn people met in the novel’s one-month time span. As the dreams of each strikingly memorable character, major and minor, inexorably turn to nightmare, individuals and soon the community are overwhelmed, while the precise nature of Gaunt’s evil thrillingly stays just out of focus. King, like Leland Gaunt, knows just what his customers want.
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### Author:  [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/needful-things/338588/4 "2006-01-05T17:23:34Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#):
>
> What is Needful things about? This quote just begs an explanation. Please tell me all about it!
Gaunt offers you your fondest material desire. For the little boy, it’s the last baseball card to complete his set. For Polly, it’s relief from her arthritis. For the sherrif, it’s to know what happened in the last moments of his wife and son’s lives.
Gaunt gives them those things, but at a cost other than money. They pay a tiny bit of cash, but the real payment is a “little” prank, done to someone they don’t know all that well and don’t really like. The pranks are done in such a way to throw blame on the victims’ enemies.
As Fark says, hilarity ensues. The whole town is soon embroiled in plots for revenge which escalates into a full-grown battle.
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### Author:  [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2006, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/needful-things/338588/5 "2006-01-05T17:25:21Z")
Oh, crud-- hit “reply” too soon.
But the crux of the matter is once the people realize what they’ve done, they look down at their purchase and see that it’s worthless: the boy’s baseball card is for another player, for example, and the tape he gives the sherrif of his family’s last moments is a fake.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2006, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/needful-things/338588/6 "2006-01-05T19:47:55Z")
Ouch. That’s just _mean_.