Sight Unseen

In some ways, Stephen King's stories are like looking through a keyhole, and having a cockroach crawl out onto your face. There is much more substance to these stories than a simple glimpse through a keyhole can reveal. I already reviewed Stephen King Goes to the Movies, an anthology of short stories, on Goodreads (lol gotta plug my brand), so I thought that I should do something a little more on this site. I chose to observe one of the King's favorite themes; the abject subverting the mundane into something much more than meets the eye. Across the collection of short stories, all characters, settings and even small props, are not what they seem. They are in fact, something more.

"They weren't what they looked like at all. Their faces wouldn't stay in their faces, for one thing..." (King 360).

The low men in yellow coats mentioned in the quote above are not the only Stephen King characters in these stories who put on different faces to hide their true intentions. "Low Men in Yellow Coats" is also home to one of the most ominous character shifters; Mr. Don Biderman. Most of the time, he is addressed by the young protagonist Bobby Garfield, with the formal prefix of "Mr. Biderman", which gives power, and a professional feel to this character. He comes off as polished when the reader learns he is Liz Garfield's boss, but that polish is only a temporary varnish for the villain within. Throughout the story, there are hints of a much more sinister man beneath the "Mr." moniker. Before leaving for a seminar with Mr. Biderman, Liz talks to her son about this special opportunity that Mr. Biderman has offered. "Bobby knew his mom wanted to sell real estate...But if it was such a big chance, why had it made her cry?" (King, 202). By the time Bobby realizes why Mr. Biderman's mask does not accurately reflect his insidious interior, the damage has already been done. The deception is complete.

Warden Sam Norton in "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" is another Stephen King villain in sheep's clothing; "His major innovation as the head of our happy little family was to make sure that each incoming prisoner had a New Testament. He had a small plaque on his desk, gold letters inlaid in teakwood, which said CHRIST IS MY SAVIOR," (King 463). In sharp juxtaposition with the hyper-religious warden Norton performs as, he is as hard-edged and ruthless in his treatment of the innocent Andy Dufrense. After having his innocence confirmed by a fellow inmate, Dufrense asks to meet with Norton. He believes that there is a chance he could be released with the introduction of this new information. Norton shows his more roughly hewn side of his personality as he gruffly reprimands Dufrense for indulging in pipe dreams, and goes so far as to have Tommy Williams, the potential link to Andy Dufrense's freedom, moved to a different prison, stepping further away from his "friendly pastor" image.

Of course, some King characters are unexpectedly good-hearted. In "Low Men in Yellow Coats", Bobby and his friend Ted Brautigan travel "down there" into a seedy area of Bridgeport. In a land filled with pawn shops and ne'er-do-wells, Bobby meets Alanna Files. Though Bobby approaches his meeting with Alanna with trepidation, she proves to be a valuable ally to him, subverting his expectations. She is able to provide him with a gentler view of his late father than he normally receives from his mother. This not only changes Bobby perception of his father, and of Alanna, but gives him a more favorable opinion of the intimidating side of town she inhabits.

"'...there are no ghosts in room 1408 and never have been. There's something in there--I've felt it myself--but it's not a spirit presence," (King 15).

Locations in novellas by Stephen King take on their own unique power and connotations that don't align with the more common associations of our society. The church in Gatlin in "Children of the Corn" is so subverted, it emits a sort of dark energy that exists at the epicenter of the town. It has turned the child inhabitants--the members of our society that are most often viewed as uncorrupted--into brainwashed killers at the mercy of the strange religion that has gripped their town. "It wasn't the Grace Baptist Church any more, that was why. So what kind of church was it?" (King 560). Hotels, too exist much differently in the Stephen King universe than they do in other places. In "1408", King revisits similar territory as The Shining, where the home away from home of a hotel setting becomes a dangerous prison that poisons the mind of the protagonist. The whole of the Hotel Dolphin has a sort of strange power in it, established very early on when the manager, Mr. Olin, brings Mike Enslin into his office to try and dissuade Enslin from writing about the room. "The hotel manager had seemed tentative in the lobby, almost beaten. In his oak-paneled office...Olin seemed to gain assurance again," (King 6). Like so many other locales in Stephen King novels, there is much more that exists within seemingly mundane buildings than immediately meets the eye.

"'You look at those [posters] and you feel like you could almost...not quite but almost step right through and be beside them,'" (King 462).

As Andy Dufrense explains to Red in the previous quote, in "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption", small props and items take on a much greater meaning in Stephen King stories. Andy Dufrense is like a magician with his objects that come into his presence; a rock hammer became a key, and a poster of Rita Hayworth became a passageway to freedom. In "Children of the Corn", King himself wrote that he believes the reason that the movie was not as much as a success was because the corn doesn't translate into as palpable fear as exists in the short story. The corn is more than green husks waving in a Nebraska breeze, they are a home to a mysterious, terrifying force that lurks just beyond the city limits.

I know I didn't mention "The Mangler" at all in this analysis. That ridiculous story was too much for me. But the benefit of owning and reading an anthology of Stephen King's short stories, such as Stephen King Goes to the Movies, is that I can trace a theme across several stories while I read them. This is a three star (out of five) read, some of Stephen King's most solid novellas.

Quotes from:

King, Stephen. Stephen King Goes to the Movies. Hodder and Stoughton, 2009.