stephen king

"If you have an imagination, let it run free."

- Steven King, 1963

The King of Terror

        Stephen Edwin King is one of today's most popular and best selling writers. 

King combines the elements of psychological thrillers, science fiction, the paranormal,

and detective themes into his stories.  In addition to these themes, King sticks to

using great and vivid detail that is set in a realistic everyday

place.  Stephen King

who is mainly known for his novels, has broadened his horizons to different types of

writings such as movie scripts, nonfiction, autobiographies, children's books, and short

stories.  While Stephen King might be best known for his novels The Stand and It, some

of his best work that has been published are his short stories such as "The Body" and

"Quitters Inc".  King's works are so powerful because he uses his experience and

observations from his everyday life and places them into  his unique  stories. 

        Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947, at the

Maine General Hospital.  Stephen, his mother Nellie, and his adopted brother David were

left to fend for themselves when Stephen's father Donald, a Merchant Marine captain,

left one day, to go the store to buy a pack of cigarettes, and never returned.  His

fathers leaving had a big indirect impact on King's life.  In the autobiographical work

Danse Macabre, Stephen King recalls how his family life was altered:  "After my father

took off, my mother, struggled, and then landed on her feet."  My brother and I didn't

see a great deal of her over the next nine years.  She worked a succession of continuous

low paying jobs."  Stephen's first outlooks on life were influenced by his older brother

and what he figured out on his own.  While young Stephen and his family moved around the

North Eastern and Central United States.  When he was seven years old, they moved to

Stratford, Connecticut.  Here is where King got his first exposure to horror.  One

evening he listened to the radio adaptation of Ray Bradbury's story "Mars Is Heaven!" 

That night King recalls he "slept in the doorway, where the real and rational light of

the bathroom bulb could shine on my face" (Beaham  16).   Stephen King's exposure to

oral storytelling on the radio had a large impact on his later writings.  King tells his

stories in visual terms so that the reader would be able to "see" what was happening in

their own mind, somewhat in the same fashion the way it was done on the radio (Beaham

17).  King's fascination with horror early on continued and was pushed along only a

couple weeks after Bradbury's story.  One day little Stephen was looking through his

mother's books and came across one named "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

 After his mother finished reading the book to him, Stephen was hooked.  He immediately

asked her  to read it again.  King recalls "that summer when I was seven, [my mother]

must have read it to me half a dozen times"(Beaham  17).   Ironically that same year,

while Stephen was still seven years old, he went to go see his first horror movie, The

Creature from the Black Lagoon.  This is important because Stephen says, " Since [the

movie], I still see things cinematically.  I write down everything I see.  What I see,

it seems like a movie to me"(Beaham  17). During this year the biggest event that

probably had the biggest impact on Stephen King's writing style was the discovery of the

author H. P. Lovecraft.  King would later write of Lovecraft, "He struck with the most

force, and I still think, for all his shortcomings, he is the best writer of horror

fiction that America has yet produced"(Beaham  22).  In many of Lovecraft's writings he

always used his present surroundings as the back drop of his stories.  King has followed

in his footsteps with the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine.  Castle Rock  is a

combination of several towns that King moved to and from with his family in his

childhood. The main town that it resembles is that of Durham, Maine.  It was after the

exposure to H. P. Lovecraft's stories that King first began to write.  

        While growing up and moving around the way his family did, Stephen had never

been able to feel comfortable and settle down in one place and make friends they way

other kids his age did (Underwood  77).  Around the age of twelve the King family

finally settled in the town of Durham, Maine.  For Stephen King, Durham was the place

where his imagination began to shine.  It was at this time that Stephen first began to

make friends.  Along with his friends, Stephen would go the movies a lot.  Stephen would

use the movies as a inspiration.  Although he enjoyed going out and having fun, 

whenever he would come home, Stephen would immediately write down his experiences and

observations.  Frequently King would place his friends and family into childhood fantasy

tales.  And one would always know how Stephen felt about them because of how long they

lived in the story.    It was not until college that Stephen King received any kind of

real recognition for his writings.  In the Fall of 1967, King finished his first novel,

The Long Walk, and turned it into his  sophomore American Literature professor for

review.  After a couple of weeks and a couple rounds around the department, the English

professors were stunned.  They realized that they had a real writer on their hands. 

>From then until he graduated with a bachelors degree in English from University of Maine

at Orono in the Spring of 1970, King concentrated on  rounding off the edges of his

writing technique. 

        One short story that best shows the type and technique of Stephen King's writing

is "The Body."  "The Body", which has been adapted into to a Hollywood movie, was first

published in the collection of short stories called Different Seasons.  The story is a

tale of four twelve year old friends who at the end of one summer go out on a journey in

into the woods to see a dead body.  While on their journey  they learn about life,

friendship, and are propelled from innocent to experienced.  On the surface of the story

it appears to be simple journey with its occasional mishaps, but the true magnificence

is that this story has a strong autobiographical coincidence.  The main character,

Gordie Lachance,  is a boy growing up on his own through the memory of his dead older

brother.  Growing up, Gordie, an avid story teller,  dreamed of becoming a writer. 

Before  his brothers accidental death, all his parents would ever care about was his

brother.  Since his death, Gordie's parents have presumably shut themselves away from

Gordie.  This, to a certain degree is true of King.  Because of his father leaving when

Stephen was two, and his mother taking on around the clock jobs, he never really had any

parental guidance. 

        The story itself is written with Gordie narrating in the present time look back

at the journey.  At the time of his flashback, Gordie is a best selling author who has

returned to his home town of Castle Rock to revisit his past.  This is ironic because at

the time Stephen wrote the story he himself had just moved from Bolder, Colorado, back

"home" to the town of Bangor.  King's childhood home town of Durham is used in several

different stories under the fictional town name of Castle Rock.  It is also noticeable

how in the story when Gordie "looks" back to him and his brother, his brother is the

only person who cares for him.  He noticeably goes out of his way to look out for

Gordie, and is always encouraging his and asking him about his writing, while all his

parents seem to do is ignore Gordie.  This also can be related to King's past because

while growing up his brother while only two years older then him, always seemed to be

there for Stephen and look out for him.  Probably the deepest imagery of the story is at

the end of the novel.  Gordie is shown back at home and putting the finishing touches on

his latest work.  While finishing up,  Gordie is interrupted by his son who is shown in

a sense to be a good-natured and caring boy.  Gordie experiences a deep love for his

family at the time.  This setup is presumably placed in the story as an escape for King.

 In his autobiography Danse Macabre, King tells of his fear of providing for and caring

for a family (Reino  112).  This shows King pushing away the fear, in a sense saying

that he is all right.  That he has now embraced the idea.              

        One of King's best work is also one that does not fit in any category of his

usual writings.  For an author who usually writes horror, "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank

Redemption", is a story that is a refreshing sidestep.  The story tells of  how Andy

Dufresne,  who is falsely tried, convicted, and sentenced to back to back life sentences

for the double murder of his wife and her lover, deals with being trapped within a

dreadful situation that are out of his hands. Throughout the nineteen years that he is

in Shawshank prison, Andy has to endure everything from a gang called the "Sisters", who

go around raping and beating their prey to being forced to create and run a money

laundering  scheme for the prison Warden.  If this story was written without the authors

name on it, there is none of Stephen King's characteristic style, except for maybe in

one place in the story.  The one possible place that even hints that it is from the mind

of King is at the end of the story where Red is off to keep his promise to Andy.  Andy

asks Red, that when he get out of jail to travel to a southern Maine town called Buxton

and look for something he buried in a "hay field under a large oak field."  The suspense

of what was buried and the description of the field in Buxton is what  is typical of

Stephen King.  While the story is very uncharacteristic of King it does deep down relate

to himself.  The theme of hope and of how Andy overcomes the situation is one that is

tied closely to King.  It runs a direct parallel with life as a child and how his life

has turned out.  Just as Andy was thrown into predicament and later escapes and lives

his life on  his own terms, Stephen, early on was forced to move from town to town with

mother and brother.  In the end Stephen escapes and now lives on his own terms. 

        Stephen King's works are so powerful because he uses his experiences and

observations from his life and places them into his unique works.  What seems to make

Stephen King's stories almost magical is that the settings of his stories are placed

into common every day places.  Additionally, Stephen's writings are true to life in 

peoples mind's because he draws upon common fears.  Just as King's writing style and

genre  had been influenced by movies throughout  his life, he is now influencing the

same industry with his own vision and imagination.  King's writings are so widely

appealing that over 42 of his works have been based upon or turned into Hollywood 

movies  which have included stars like Jack Nicholson (The Shining), John Travolta

(Carrie), and Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption).

 Works Cited

Beaham ,  George .  Stephen King Companion , The .  Kansas City :  Universal    Press

Syndicate Company ,  1995 . 

Beaham ,  George .  Stephen King Story, The : A Literary Profile .  Kansas City :      

Universal Press Syndicate Company , 1992 . 

King ,  Stephen .  "Body ,  The" in Different Seasons .  New York :  Viking     Penguin

Inc .,  1982 .

King ,  Stephen .  "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" in Different        Seasons

.  New York :  Viking Penguin Inc .,  1982 .

Reino ,  Joseph .  Stephen King :  The First Decade ,  Carrie to Pet Sematary .        

Boston :  Twayne Publishers ,  1988 .

Underwood ,  Tom .  Conversations on Terror with Stephen King .  New York :     Warner

Books ,  1988 .

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