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STEPHEN KING OF STYLE Outline He especially incorporates the feelings of hope and his own personal occurrences into his novels. In addition to these themes, King sticks to using lucid imagery that is set in a realistic everyday place as well as symbols and unique characterization to help his paced suspense and sub-plotting. A. Introduction I. Themes Hope: in the Green Mile, the hope of something being better paranormally disturbed: in Carrie, she uses her telekinetic powers for revenge familiarity: the settings and atmosphere imply theme and thought of the story psychologically trouble: the father in The Shining is a paranoid schizophrenic B. Body II.
King s Influential background father leaving mother and family (the Shining) Ray Bradbury s Mars is Heaven movies w / friends first horror movie, Creature from Black Lagoon The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ignored girl in high school (Carrie) H. P. Lovecraft s writings the atmosphere of Durham, Maine C.
Conclusion III. Styles archetypes: Tony as wise old man figure in Shining and Tommy in Carrie, the archetypal quest underlining Carrie, the blood in Carrie, the snake always mentioned in Carrie by the mother atmosphere: King chooses familiar spots to place his stories that give a magical quality sub-plotting: Percy and his unthinkable action in The Green Mile, the radio being broken and the past story of room 211 in The Shining suspense: the sub-plots building suspense in The Shining, suspense is accumulated from sub-plots unique characterization: each character has a special background, such as Danny in the Shining, John Coffey in The Green Mile imagery: everything is a mental movie STEPHEN KING OF STYLE I write everything I see (George Beahm, p. 17) Stephen Edwin King is amongst the world s most popular all-time writers, and is undoubtedly the worlds leading horror writer. King preys on the elements of the paranormal, and familiarity into his stories. He especially incorporates the feelings of hope and his own personal occurrences into his novels.
In addition to these themes, King sticks to using lucid imagery that is set in a realistic everyday place as well as symbols and unique characterization to help his paced suspense and sub-plotting. While Stephen King might be best known for his novels Carrie and The Shining, some of his best work that has been published is short stories such as The Green Mile. (Beahm, p. 10 - 11) 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. (David Rawsthorne, p. 1) At the age of six, the family moved to Stratford Connecticut. Here, King received his first exposure to horror. One evening, he listened to the radio adaptation of Ray Bradbury s story Mars Is Heaven!
Ever since that night, Stephen has slept with a nightlight. (Beahm, p. 16) Even now, at age 52, he still sleeps with a nightlight. (Beahm, p. 31) It was his exposure to oral storytelling on the radio had a large impact on his later writings and not just his sleeping pattern. Such as how the images depicted in his stories are mental-movies and are written as if someone was speaking them. King s fascination with horror early on continued and was pushed along only a couple weeks after Bradbury s story. One day, as Stephen was looking through his mother s books, he came across 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. 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. (Beahm, p. 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. In many of Lovecraft s writings he always used his present surroundings as the backdrop 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 Durham, Maine. It was after the exposure to H. P. Lovecraft s stories that King first began to write. (Beahm, p. 22) 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 the way other kids his age did.
Around the age of twelve the King family settled in the town of Durham, Maine. For Stephen King, Durham was the place where his imagination began to twinkle. 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 inspiration. Although he enjoyed going out and having fun, whenever he would come home, Stephen would feverishly write down his experiences and observations.
Frequently King would place his friends and family into childhood fantasy tales. It was not until college that Stephen King received any 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. (Beahm, p. 39) 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. (Beahm, p. 86) From then until he graduated with a bachelor s 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 story that best shows the type and technique of Stephen King s writing is The Shining. The Shining, which has been adapted into a Hollywood movie, was first sold to men magazines and each chapter was separately published.
The story is a tale of a family of three who at one summer s end goes to the Overlook Hotel in Bolder, Colorado to only discover the hotel holds a deep and horrible secret with the father. King sets up a foreshadowing setting for doom when the family is snowed in at this huge hotel with a psychologically disturbed father. At this point, the wife and child learn about life, friendship, and are propelled from innocent and naive to frightened but experienced. On the surface of the story it appears to be a simple journey with its occasional mishaps, but the true magnificence is that this story has a strong autobiographical coincidence.
The main character, Danny Torrance, is a boy growing up on his own with the help of his imaginary friend, Tony. Then the father, Jack Torrance, dreams of being a writer and this is part of the reason he escapes to Colorado. He is searching for inspiration just as King was when he went on vacation to Estes Park. Then halfway through The Shining, the father shuts himself off to his family.
He is deemed as being a paranoid schizophrenic and is no longer part of Danny s life. 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. (Beahm, p. 70) The story itself is written in third person and (in the ABC printed version) at the end has a flashback in the present time looking back at the journey. At the time of his flashback, Danny has successfully completed college and has returned to his hometown in Stovington, Vermont.
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 hometown 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 Danny looks back to Tony, who can be considered as an archetypal wise old man. This is because Tony noticeably goes out of his way to look out for Danny, and is always encouraging him and giving Danny direction when needed, while all his parents seem to do is ignore Danny. (King, p. 319 - 321) Still, the book Carrie has been reviewed as being the least autobiographical of King s works. Stephen was not ignored nor pushed around in high school just as Carrie.
Although, the concept of the story was taken from a high school dilemma of his where he saw one girl always being ignored and teased. (King, p. 8) He took this into account and always wondered what the girl was thinking and how she felt about all the negative attention. (Beahm, p. 29) He wrote Carrie and placed himself as Tommy, the boy who looks after her and helps her be pushed up in social status. The only thing is that King never had a chance to help the girl he saw in high school but felt writing Carrie was one way to make up for what he should ve done. Even though Carrie is a hit because of its detailed gore and a paranormally psychotic girl, there is a clever archetypal quest underlying the best use of King s brilliantly pulsed suspense. Carrie s mother is always telling Carrie that her breasts are dirty pillows and are representations of corruption and trickery. (King, p. 120) This call to adventure by disobeying her mother propels Carrie to make friends with a boy named Tommy who leads her to her destruction on prom night. (King, p. 96 - 97) As he was trying to help, trusting him was just as crossing the threshold from her world of shyness to a realm of her unknown, which is popularity and openness. She underwent a series of tests as rocks were thrown at her house and tampons thrown at her. (King, p. 8) Then came the fourth stage where she is awarded with revenge. Friends of Tommy s who completely despised Carrie dumped pig blood on her at prom night and she turns furious.
Her telekinetic powers kick in full-gear and she murders many high school students. In the end, Carrie returns home to her mother from her journey of being a normal student and dies there. One of King s best works is also one that does not fit in any category of his usual writings. For an author who usually writes horror, The Green Mile, is a story that is an uplifting victory.
The story tells of how John Coffey, who is falsely tried, convicted, and sentenced to Old Sparky (electric chair) for the double murder and rape of two little girls, deals with being trapped within a dreadful situation that are out of his hands. Throughout the eight months that he is in the Green Mile, John has to endure everything from Billy the Kid, who goes around spitting and urinating on people being held in the Green Mile to coping with a pushy racist worker named Percy. If this story was written without the authors name on it, there is none of Stephen King s characteristic style, except for maybe a few places in the story. One possible place that even hints that it is from the mind of King is in the middle of the story during a sub-plot where control is left in the wrong hands. The suspense is heightened King-style as Percy, the snooty Green Mile worker, purposely forgets to wet the sponge before it is placed on Old Sparky s next victim. The grotesque visions described of how the body smelled and appeared as it was literally being fried like an egg during the electrocution is typical of King. (King, p. 292 - 293) Though the story is very uncharacteristic of King it does relate to himself.
The theme of hope runs throughout as it usually does in his novels and of how Paul Edgecombe, John Coffey s good friend in the Green Mile, overcomes a situation tied closely to King. It runs a direct parallel with life as a child and how his life has turned out. Just as Paul 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. Finally, Stephen escapes the forced moving and now lives on his own terms. Stephen King s works are so powerful because he uses his experiences, archetypes, common fear, 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 setting of his stories are common every day places. For instance, an overcasting hotel or even what seems to be a regular high school. Not only is it his incredible choice of setting that makes his stories enchanting but also it s the unique characterization in each of them. Such as in The Shining, Danny is setup as a bright boy with a hidden talent he can shine. (King, p. 92) He glows with beautiful mystery as he walks the halls of the Overlook Hotel and shines courageously as he is compelled against his father. The suspense builds throughout the story through use of sub-plots, such as haunted room 217 (King, p. 99) and the radio, the only source of communication to the outside world, just happens to be broken. Everything considered, Stephen s writings are true to life in people s minds due to his continuous use of personal occurrences and feelings of hope in daily lives.
He presses on mastering the Hollywood box office and the bestseller list with his twisted, subplot writing styles and paranormal themes with just enough heart. Just as King s technique and genre had been influenced by movies throughout his life, he is now influencing the same industry with his own vision and imagination. Works Cited Beahm, George. The Stephen King Companion. Eng. 362 Kansas: Universal Syndicate, 1995. Beahm, George.
The Stephen King Story: A Literary Profile. Eng. 291 Kansas: Universal Syndicate, 1992. CD-ROM. Office 97 Bookshelf. New York: Microsoft, 1997. King, Stephen.
Carrie. Eng. 245 New York: Signet, January 1975. King, Stephen. The Green Mile. Eng. 536 USA: Pocket Books, March 1999.
King, Stephen. The Shining. Eng. 464 New York: Signet, January 1978. King, Tabitha. The Man: Stephen King. November 1999.
Eng. 2, Maine. 29 March 2000. web Rawsthrone, David. Stephen King and Bachman Personal Information. May 1999. Eng. 2, Maine. 29 March 2000. web
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