Essay/Term paper: Stephen king

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Stephen King

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.1 In addition to these themes, King

sticks to using great



and vivid detail that is set in a realistic everyday

place.2 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".3



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.4 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.5 His fathers



leaving

had a big indirect impact on King"s life. 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."6 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.7 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."8 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.9 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."10 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."11

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."12 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 acombination of several towns that King moved to

and from with



his family in his childhood.13 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. 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.14 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.15



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.16





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 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.17 King

tells of his fear of providing



for and caring for a family. This shows

King pushing away the fear, in a sense saying that



he is all right. That

he has now embraced the idea.18



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.19 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.20



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. J