Kantor1

Alicja Kantor

Writing Year 3

Christopher Brighton MA

7 November 2009

Stephen King -

The Horror of It All .

A horror genre has a long history. Its roots are of the ancient origin of
supernatural tales that form a substantial part of folk literature. The real literary cultivation of
fear and curiosity began to emerge in the 18th century pre-Romantic era with Gothic novel.
Horace Walpole and his Castle of Otranto (1765) may be said to have founded the horror
story. Then Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s famous novel Frankenstein (1818) introduced
pseudoscience into the genre. The Romanticism gave us German storyteller E.T.A Hoffmann
and the American Allan Poe who raised the horror story to a level far above mere
entertainment. It was achieved through their skilful intermingling of reason and madness,
eerie atmosphere and everyday reality. It was they who invented spectres, doubles, and
haunted houses with a psychological symbolism that gave their tales a haunting credibility.
(Britannica 77) As we read in the encyclopaedia Britannica: ”The Gothic influence persisted
throughout the 19th century in such works as Sheridan Le Fanu’s The House by the
Churchyard and Green Tea, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, and Bram Stoker’s vampire tale
Dracula. The influence was revived in the 20th century by science-fiction and fantasy writers
such as Mervyn Peake in his Gormenghast series.” Stephen King is one of those great masters
if not the greatest one. He is best known as a horror writer but it will be unjust to put him only
in this one category. He has achieved a stunning success creating an unique and various style
in order to satisfy his readers’ needs. Just to quote his great novel Misery: “… by becoming
the writer of them himself, he had condemned himself to a life of dissection”(19) which
clearly proves that he is experimenting on literature field and his gratefulness lies in the fact
that in any genres he is able to demonstrate his amazing talent.

Since 1974 and the publication of his first novel, Carrie, his stories have consistently
appeared on every best seller list. They range from the ghastly and the unworldly, to the real
of near truth and the terrifyingly possible. What is more, he wrote about writing in Dance
Macabre and in chapter on Horror Fiction King has psychoanalyzed the cultural roots of
 Kantor2

horror and recognized his own literary roots in the Gothic’s theme. (267) Firstly, Gothic novel
focuses on terrifying, archaic setting, an indefinite past, and the use of the supernatural.
Secondly, it is connected with contemporary American fiction writers dealing with psychic
grotesque and landscapes of the mind. Finally, it refers to horror fiction itself whose writers
drive their techniques of suspense, their sense of the archaic, and many of their crucial
symbols of the supernatural from the original Gothic fiction. (Strengell 33) This definition can
be applied to Stephen King’s. The writer emphasizes that an effective horror story must be a
well-balanced blending of reality and surreality and possess a pleasing allegorical feel. The
greatest examples will be The Shining and Salem’s Lost. In the first, the supernatural motif of
the novel is the haunted house. The second novel is undoubtedly classic, gothic horror, not
that far removed from the vampire lore of its predecessor Dracula. Critics have pointed to the
influence of literary classics, especially Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on Pet Sematary as its
variant. Although, Jesse W. Nash argues that King's Gothic is particularly rooted in popular
culture and his own life experiences and therefore represents a singular, postmodern
interpretation of the genre. (Strengell, 35)

Undoubtedly, King is a diverse writer who mixes different genres which can be
verified in his work. For example, we can find an epic fantasy in such novels like The Stand,
The Talisman and It . This genre is generally accepted to be a sub-genre of fantasy that is set
in invented or parallel words. The Stand is thrilling novel that portrays the forces of good
against evil. Despite its supernatural aspects it is somewhat realistic as it shows it is in man’s
nature to build society and fight for his beliefs. In The Talisman there are elements when Jack
meets Speedy who introduces the boy to a magical parallel world, the ‘Territores’. A
nonlinear narrative in It alternates between two different time periods and shifts among the
dissimilar perspectives and stories of its seven protagonists is characteristic for fantasy.
(Magistrale, 67)

The Shining is conceived as a contemporary version of a classical tragedy. We know

that this genre touch upon human suffering and a personal difficult situation that you are not
able to handle. The scary and at the same time tragic things are tangible. Namely here it is the
alcoholism. The father is portrayed as a habitual drinker. The wife is shown as a battered
woman. And the child who lives in such a dysfunctional family developed psychological
problems. The setting for all that is a haunted hotel. Danny overcomes these obstacles, in part,
because of his supernatural attribute. Traumatic experiences which he is exposed to are finally
overcome. Thus, it is his father that is the tragic character. He has not got a solid support
system, unlike Danny, in his family’s love that would help him to move outside the shadow of
 Kantor3

his dysfunctional behavior. We see that it is partly tragic story but King’s added his profound
faith in the resiliency of human nature and he enduring power of love. (Strengell, 45)

Stephen King has proven that out of bloody stories he is also fond of writing a fairy
tale but, of course in his own horror mood. In the novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,
nine-year-old Trisha McFarland is lost in the Maine woods. For days she wanders deeper into
the wilderness in search of human beings or signs of civilized life. Her torment is heightened
by her constant struggle against nature’s elements from swamp bogs and incessant insect
attacks to her feeble efforts to forage food. This is an example of a constant element in his
stories that is a nature which shapes the personalities. He draws upon a nature that is savage
and hostile. Where our imagination gives us the creatures that scare or assist us. Here it does
not help us. This novel is said to be a modern fairy tale as its plot and characters are simple
and it ends up happily. Although, the world that Trisha is struggling to return to is not that
much better than the one she is lost in. Her parents have divorced and are fighting over her
and her brother.(Magistrale, 55)

Finally, the most complex novel The Dark Tower, which is the ‘opus magnum’ of
King’s work, gives us a wide unquestionable evidence of diversity in his writing. It contains a
series of seven books written between 1970 and 2004. The stories incorporates themes from
multiple genres such as fantasy tale, science fiction, horror and western elements. Mostly, it is
a fantasy fiction with the authority of the epic-fantasy tradition. Namely, J.R.R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings influence upon this novel cannot be overestimated. Like Tolkien’s Frodo,
King’s young American travelers encounter magical realms and dark challenges that they
survive only at the expense of their innocence and by the sharpening of their wits.(Magistrale,
44) A gunslinger quests for a tower whose nature is both physical and metaphorical. The
protagonist is a best element of western generic features. Than the settings are established in
second paragraph: “"The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for
what might have been parsecs in all directions. White; blinding; waterless; without feature
save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon..."
(King, 45). Virtually the entire action of the novel takes place in an open desert. As the plot
makes clear, King evokes a "symbolic" landscape where "challenge...can lead to a rebirth of
heroic individual morality."(Hoppenstand et all, 46) A plot alone contains several western
formula elements. It focuses on the tracking process and overcoming of the obstacles. Roland
desires, above all, to keep moving, as a western protagonist generally does. There are two
more elements: the outlaw motif and the revenge motif. Roland's guns and freedom from
"normal social codes" mark him as an "outlaw," the sort of person the citizens of Tull
 Kantor4

ironically consider to be an unruly lawbreaker from the "outside." Similarly as in western

stories of outstanding gunslingers.(Hoppenstand et all, 47) Washington Post’s Bill Sheehan
called the series “a humane, visionary epic and a true ‘magnum opus’ that stands as an
imposing example of pure storytelling, filled with brilliant rendered set pieces, cataclysmic
encounters and moments of desolating tragedy.” (77)

To conclude, over a past three decades Stephen King has become a remarkable writer.
Undoubtedly he has produced a body of literature that is as diverse as it is popular. We are
able to prove honestly that his work should not be labeled exclusively as a horror fiction. He
draws upon many literature genres and traditions. As Tony Magistrale stated in his work:
“epic fantasy (The Stand, The Talisman, and IT), classical tragedy (The Shining and Pet
Sematary), feminism (Gerald’s Game, Dolores Claiborne, and Rose Madder), the romance
novel (Misery), the American western (The Dark Tower), the fairy tale (The Girl Who Loved
Tom Gordon and Eyes of the Dragon), naturalism (Cujo and the Bachman books), and
political-historical meta-fiction (The Dead Zone and “Apt Pupil”)” are examples that prove a
great diversity in his writing. This demonstrates a wide spectrum of King’s writing talent. He
has managed to capture the defining spirit of his era at the same time that he has influenced it
a lot. We can compare his gratefulness with his contemporaries such as the Beatles, Steven
Spielberg, and maybe Madonna who can be said to have accomplished a similar feat.

Works Cited:

< http://www.questia.com/logout?action=done>

<http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/The_Dark_Tower_%28series
%29#encyclopedia>

Cawelti, Six-Gun Mystique , Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and
Popular Culture (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1976)
 Kantor5

Hoppenstand Gary, Ray Broadus Browne, The Gothic World of Stephen King: Landscape of
Nightmare (Popular Press, Chicago 1987 )
King Stephen, The Dark Tower; The Gunslinger (Popular Press, 1999)
Magistrale Tony, Discovering Stephen King’s The Shining ( Borgo Press, Chicago 1998)
Magistrale Tony, Landscape of Fear Stephen King’s American Gothic ( Questia Media
America )
Strengell Heidi, Dissecting Stephen King: from the Gothic to Literary Naturalism ( Popular
Press, Chicago 2006)