Essay/Term paper: The reaper's image

Essay, term paper, research paper:  World Literature

The Reaper's Image


This story is about two men who were transporting an antique mirrow from
the first floor of an old museum to the fifth. Their names were Spangler and
Carlin. This mirror had a history of being haunted, and some people would look
into the mirror and see a hooded figure standing behind them. This figure was
presumed to be Death, and whenever someone would see this figure they were never
seen again. Carlin spends the whole story trying to convice Spangler that this
is really true, but Spangler just calls Carlin crazy. Finally, near the end of
the story, Spangler looks in the mirror and sees a dark inperfection in the
corner, which he mistakes for friction tape. When Carlin tells him that there
is no friction tape on the mirror, Spangler becomes sick and leaves for the
bathroom. The story ends with Carlin waiting for Spangler to return.

I thought that this story was very good, because it started off really
slow and worked it's way into a really interesting plot. I liked the end
because it never really finished, it left the ending up to the reader. This
seems to be a common theme in a lot of Stephen King's stories. He likes to
leave the reader in suspense, and keep them wondering.

Here There Be Tygers

This story is about a little boy named Charles who is in elementary
school. He has to go to the bathrrom really bad, but he is afraid to ask
because the teacher does not like him. Finally the teacher sees him squirming
and asks him if he needs to use the restroom. He says yes and is very
embarassed in front of the class, so he leaves quickly. When he steps into the
bathroom, he sees a tiger lying in the corner, and it looks hungry. He goes
back outside and sits there for a while wondering what he should do. His friend
Kenny finally comes up to him because his teacher noticed that he was gone a
long time. Charles tells him that there is a tiger in the bathroom, but Kenny
does not believe him. Kenny goes into the bathroom and does not come back out.
Then even later, his teacher comes and starts yelling at him. She goes into the
bathroom and she doesn't come back out either. The story ends with Charles
coming back to class and reading a story about a rodeo.

This is another story that ends really abruptly. It was strange because
after knowing that his friend and his teacher were both killed by a tiger, he
goes back to class and begins reading his book. I thought that this was a
decent story, although I didn't enjoy it as much as some of the others. The one
part that I did find interesting though, was the fact that it never really
explained why a tiger would be lingering in a bathroom anyway. I like that
about these short stories, they never really make a lot of sense.

Cain Rose Up

This story is about a guy named Garrish who had just finished finals in
college and was preparing to go home. His friend and him had taken the test
just minutes before the story began, and both of them felt as if they had not
done a good job. Garrish was a 4.0 student, never doing bad in anything. His
room was always organized and it seemed as though he had his entire life
together. But the night before the final, Garrish went down and got his gun and
hid it in his dorm room. After the test, he sits up in his room and begins
shooting people with the idea that if you don't eat the world, the world eats
you. The story ends with Garrish shooting people, and a bunch of Garrish's
friends standing outside his door, and they all think he killed himself.

This was a really odd story. It starts off really normal, with Garrish
speaking with his classmates about a test that they just took. He goes to his
room like everything is normal, and then all of a sudden he begins quoting Cain
and shooting people from his window. A very odd story, if not somewhat
disturbing, much like most of his other short stories.

The Wedding Gig

This story is about a man who was in a jazz group of five musicians.
One day while they are playing in their usual club, a ganster comes in and pulls
aside the main character. The gangster Mike Scollay asks the main character if
he and his band will play for the wedding of his sister. He will pay two
hundred dollars for this, which was a lot of money in the 1930's. When asked
what the catch is, Scollay proceeds to tell him that his sister is extremely fat,
and she is marrying an Italian while she is Irish. Scollay warns him that he
hates it when people laugh, so the main character tells the band this before
they go to the wedding. At the wedding everything was going fine until about
8pm, when someone from a rival gang of Greeks came in and delivered a message
from the boss. He said that this marriage was a joke, and everyone laughed at
his sister. Scollay runs out and gets killed by the Greeks waiting outside.
Then the story moves into the future, where it turns out that the over wieght
sister became a crime boss and was responsible for the death of theGreek boss,
and overturned two other rival gangs.

This was the one story that was really different from the other ones.
He wrote this story in a more understandable fashion. I think that the main
theme to this story was revenge, because after recieving ridicule and having her
brother killed, she goes on a killing rampage and gets back at all the people
that crossed her at one point in time or another.

Morning Deliveries

This story is about a sick twisted milkman who enjoys savotaging the
items that he delivers to peoples houses. This story is different because it
kept describing very minute details, such as the ant finding food, or the
squirell finding some material for a nest. This milkman seems perfectly normal,
but as the story progressing he starts putting tarantulas in chocolate milk and
poisonous gases inside "empty" milk bottles. This story was very strange and
confused me.

This story was extremely strange and somewhat disturbing. It didn't make any
sense to me, and out of the blue some psychotic milkman is dropping tarantulas
in peoples chocolate milk. This story is a perfect example of Stephen King's
sick, yet very interesting mind. It was really odd, but I thought it was a
decent play short story.