Stephen King: America's Storyteller
Tony Magistrale
Language: English
Pages: 181
ISBN: 0313352283
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This analysis of the work of Stephen King explores the distinctly American fears and foibles that King has celebrated, condemned, and generally examined in the course of his wildly successful career.
• Presents separate chapters on major works of Stephen King, including The Shining, The Stand, It, Dolores Claiborne, and The Dark Tower
• Includes a chronology of Stephen King's life and 40-year career
• Offers a concluding interview with Stephen King
elaborate blooming flowers, dramatic deaths through second-story stained glass windows, the metastasizing of the building itself. The level of its funhouse eccentrics is never in doubt even if the focus and rationale behind its hauntings are. There’s a psychic energy contained in Rose Red and The Overlook that far surpasses whatever animates Hill House, even as Jackson’s house was the prototype. The latter’s manifestations are always linked to Eleanor and her relationship to her family. But there
understanding that the supermarket is their only safe refuge against the flying creatures. In the film, the horror of The Mist begins with the command: “There’s something in the mist. Close the door.” This is the first sign that the characters in the supermarket are imprisoned. Although they are trapped for only a short period of time in the supermarket, the employees and shoppers in The Mist devolve to basic human instincts, and in their daunting predicament display traits similar to those of
Kid, the “zookeepers,” and others like them are modern versions of Adam after the Fall, who instead of only losing the Garden of Eden, have also relinquished their self-respect, the love of Eve, and the hope of any reconciliation with God. Other characters—Stu Redman, Larry Underwood, Glen Bateman, and Frannie Goldsmith—demonstrate control over their sexual selves and behave in a manner that is both altruistic and morally responsible. In this latter group, the truest model of human survival, we
that reflects their desperate need to transform her beyond the mundane roles of daughter and wife. Ironically, this does not speak to Jessie’s inadequacies, although she believes this is the case, so much as it speaks to the insecurities and obsessive sexual imagination of most males. This is part of the psychosexual baggage that Jessie (like most women, for that matter) intuits from the most important men in her life: that she is never good enough as she is, but must always reinvent herself into
medieval past (e.g., the Territories in The Talisman) or in an equally unworldly dystopian future where a discarded technology is inoperative on an agrarian frontier (e.g., the Mid-World of The Dark Tower) has fascinated King throughout his career. The Dark Tower saga also reflects King’s career-long fascination with culling together diverse genres—in this case, the epic, the Western, gothic romance, science fiction, and fantasy—into a hybrid text where various elements of literary and cinematic