Stephen King’s, “Popsy” and “Graveyard Shift” are two short stories that bring the real-world fears into contact with fictional or imaginary fears. Stephen King, born in 1947 in Portland, Maine, has become one of the most famous and notorious horror story writers of the past century. “Popsy” was written in 1993 as part of Mr. King’s short story collection “Nightmares & Dreamscapes”. This short story can be impactful to people through a sense of fear and justice to those who do wrong. “Graveyard Shift” was written in 1970 and was first published in Caviler Magazine but was later added to King’s short story collection “Night Shift” in 1978. The relevance of this story to society, is through a sense cruel and morbid poetic justice. Both “Popsy” …show more content…
“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.” (Qtd from Alter). The imagination is a very powerful thing; with stories, novels, and conversations, when left at a cliffhanger or stopping abruptly the mind will wander for an outcome. King leaves both stories on cliff hangers in one way or another. In “Popsy” while the cliff hanger may be less evident, as it describes Sheridan’s last sight on his dying breath. The wonder comes from the child and his father who is not directly described as but can only be assumed are vampires. However even with that conclusion, the reader is still left wondering about what happens next, not only to the child and father but to Sheridan as …show more content…
Ending with the sentence, “Stevenson came back with the lights; a few moments later they started down.” (King) This leaves multiple possibilities of what could happen, leaving the reader with an endless amount of questions. Some readers can feel annoyed with authors when leaving stories on cliffhangers. Some might even go as far as to call it lazy writing by leaving the reader unsatisfied with the ending of a story. While some novels may have sequels, with short stories, the story is over. Nonetheless, it leaves the reader thinking about what they just read. King once said, “And in real life endings aren't always neat, whether they're happy endings, or whether they're sad endings.” The greatest stories will leave a reader question everything they know, or thought they
I have provided a clear evaluation of his essay in an organized way using the appropriate standards of evaluation. In understanding why humans “Crave Horror Movies” even when some people get nightmares after watching them we find the importance of our emotions and fears. We find those emotions and fears form a body of their own which needs to be maintained properly in order to remain healthy. We see how emotions can be controlled though viewing horror movies. Stephen King’s “Why We Crave Horror Movies” is a well written essay with convincing analogies, comparisons, and urban humor.
Stevenson then went on to put a scary touch to the story by telling us
Finding clues left by the author is essential for figuring out where a story’s headed. Readers can find these clues and use them to create a hypothesis in their own mind of how the story will end. “There was Slade and here was Mr. Baumer with his bills and here I was, just as before,
In Dean Koontz’s book Odd Thomas a young man’s life is laid bare before us. The book’s protagonist is a 20 year old named Odd Thomas. Odd is fry cook at a diner, in a small town in California called Pico Mundo. His life is described as pretty normal except Odd has the ability to see dead people. More importantly he not only sees dead people but he is given this ability to seemingly help dead people right the wrongs in their lives. The book is written in first person and it gives Odd’s account of a major event that happened in August, in the sleepy town of Pico Mundo. Through his recount and back story, we see not only what happens but the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. Koontz’s book, Odd Thomas, uses in story influences to provide convincing characterization for a well-rounded main character that has had an interesting life.
The ending of the novel was inspiring. The author suggests the reader to look into great novels, and even supplies a list of novels a personally suggests. He ended with a very ...
Edgar Allan Poe is known for some of the most horrifying stories ever written through out time. He worked with the natural world, animals, and weather to create chilling literature. Two most notable thrillers are “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe was infatuated with death, disfigurement, and dark characteristics of the world. He could mix characters, setting, theme,and mood in a way that readers are automatically drawn into reading. Both of these short stories have the same major aspects in common.
The most powerful way Stevenson had used to create suspense was by withholding information which keeps the reader reading on. Also he used his scene setting as a way to build tension and suspense. Like in Dracula it was Dracula’s castle, in this novel it is the dark, lonely, dangerous streets of London. The name of the chapter also creates suspense to keep reading because it is called “The Last Night”. This makes the reader think is it the last night in the book, the last night for someone or the ending of the book?
When I was young I would always watch “scary movies” with my sister. For this reason, Every night I would have nightmares after each movie. By all means, I’d end up on the other side of the bed or on the floor. Given that, Stephen King claims his short story “ Why We Crave Horror” is to crave horror by facing our fears and, re-establish our feelings normalcy by getting used to the horror towards something that is called the human condition provided that, he is right about his claims. By all means, His three claims are “To show we can,that we are not afraid, that we can ride this roller coaster”. “ We also go to re-establish our feelings of essential normality”. “ If we share a brotherhood of man, then we also share an insanity of man”.
Asma, Stephen. On Monsters :An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
first some type of mystery, but as we read the ending we realize that it is
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” tells the tale of a fifteen year old girl named Connie living in the early 1960’s who is stalked and ultimately abducted by a man who calls himself Arnold Friend. The short story is based on a true event, but has been analyzed by many literary scholars and allegedly possesses numerous underlying themes. Two of the most popular interpretations of the story are that the entire scenario is only dreamt by Connie (Rubin, 58) and that the abductor is really the devil in disguise (Easterly, 537). But the truth is that sometimes people really can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Connie, a victim of terrifying circumstance will be forever changed by her interactions with Friend.
King chooses to compare the minds of a child and an adult to see the different resilience levels when exposed to the horror genre. He describes his findings as a paradox, “Children, who are physically quite weak, lift the weight of unbelief with ease” (PP 118). King assumes because the mind of an adult is mature it can handle the horrific depictions within the horror variety yet children seem too be able to withstand the pressure. King backed his theory by analyzing Walt Disney’s movies and their impact on a child’s imagination. Walt Disney’s movie Bambi is what Stephen King pinpointed when comparing the toll of horrific events in children and adult minds. King questioned adults about what was most terrifying about a movie when they were younger and they stated, “Bambi’s father shot by the hunter, or Bambi and his mother running before the forest fire” (PP 119). Another aspect King unveiled was the Doppler Effect and that, “A part of ‘growing up’ is the fact that everything has a scare potential for the child under eight” (PP 119). The cognitive imagination does not stop developing it just suppresses certain mental functions to draw a line between what is real and what is not. Horror novelist mask the tension with comedy yet with one swift motion it, “Knocks the adult props out from under us and tumbles us back down the slide into childhood” (PP
In conclusion, it is hard to grasp the true meaning of the story unless the story is read a second time because of the author's style of writing.
The Tell Tale Heart, written by Edgar Allan Poe, and Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock were both formidable, revolutionary and horrifying creations to the audience’s of their times and to some extent, still are today. Hitchcock drew audiences in into his work by utilizing certain camera angles, mise-en-scene and diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. However, Edgar Allan Poe used a variety of literary techniques such as varying sentence structure, imagery and irony to draw his readers in. While these two masterpieces are unique in terms of content, both of them explore a prominent theme, fear.