Dissecting Stephen King : from the Gothic to literary naturalism by Strengell Heidi

Author:Strengell, Heidi [Strengell, Heidi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: United States, King, Stephen, 1947-, 1947- -- Criticism and interpretation, Horror tales, American -- History and criticism, Naturalism in literature, Gothic revival (Literature) -- United States, Gothic revival (Literature), LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General, American
ISBN: 9780299209735
Publisher: Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press/Popular Press
Published: 2005-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Literary Naturalism in King's Works

In his fiction King reverts again and again to the duality between good and evil and the fact that human beings personify both. The very exercise of free will poses the major problems for the protagonists in most of his stories, and therefore it is the basis of my analysis of naturalistic traits in his fiction. The discussion of King's various types of determinism takes the individual character as the starting point and proceeds through genetic determinism and sociological determinism to cosmological determinism and, finally, to metafictional determinism, the means by which the author controls the forces controlling his fictional multiverse. In brief, the main issues analyzed in some detail are the question of whether human will is free or constrained (the section "Free Will and Responsibility") and the four types of determinism in King, including fate with its various synonyms ("Genetic and Sociological Determinism," "Cosmological Determinism and Fate," and "Metafictional Determinism").

Martin Gray defines naturalism as "[a] more particularised branch of realism” (135). Therefore, before I discuss the naturalistic traits in King, it is worthwhile to consider whether he can also be regarded as a realist. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen in Truth, Fiction, and Literature view realism as having three prominent features: "a certain kind of aim, namely, truth-telling or 'faithfulness' to the facts; a certain kind of content, the representation of social reality in particulars; and a certain kind of form, involving simplicity rather than ornateness, mirroring that

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Literary Naturalism in King's Works

of documentary history" (311-12, italics in original). While Lamarque and Olsen define the aim of realism as a documentation of real facts, King deals with real-life fears through allegory. He argues that "the horror genre has been able to find national phobic pressure points, and those books and films which have been the most successful almost always seem to play upon and express fears which exist across a wide spectrum of people" (DM, 5). Allegory is needed, because "if the shit starts getting too thick, [authors and filmmakers] can always bring the monster shambling out of the darkness again" (5). Although he explores the difficult questions of real life and, in a sense, documents American life. King takes liberties to advance his ideas. On a number of occasions, he has also expressed the paradox implicit in the horror genre: "Reality is an unnatural order" (Winter, Art , 114, italics in original) and "Fiction is the truth inside the lie" (DM, 403). During his search for moral truth, King frequently surpasses the boundaries of realism and cannot thus be regarded as a realist in the strict sense of the term.

In other words, only a few of his stories could actually take place in real life, and even the vast majority of these stories are borderline cases. Of all his writing, "The Body," a thinly veiled autobiographical, coming-of-age story, presents King at his most realistic. It relates the story of four friends who undertake a rite of passage to find the corpse of a boy who has disappeared, but who, in fact, has been hit by a train.

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