The Shining by Stephen King

King’s popularity is based on his skill of create interesting characters, to make a realistic plot, and on his intense awareness of what terrifies his readers. King often talked about the experiences in his own life that have led to this awareness, including being abandoned by his father as a young child (Kraft 3). As a result of his great storytelling abilities, King has become one of the bestselling authors of all time and has made a big influence on the development of popular literature (Kraft 2).

King has many techniques that he uses to get a reader interested. He uses the real and supernatural worlds of his novel, It , to make the point that the worlds need each other to thrive. For example, the town of Derry, the real, needs the creature “It”, the supernatural, so they can coexist together (“Art…” 6). King also uses hallucination in his novel The Shining to scare his readers. The little boy, Danny, would see an imaginary friend named Tony constantly. Tony showed up in moments of anxiety and loneliness (“Strange…” 4). Constantly in Danny’s mind are thoughts of divorce, suicide, breakdown, danger, emergency, and insanity. At these points of the novel a reader can say that King did not have good father figure (“Strange…” 3).

A close reading of the economic comments in King’s fiction often shows that he is more concerned with the spiritual fraud that capitalism make than the promises of luxury resulting from material gain. In other words, people are trying to get to the top while trampling anyone in their way (Davis 1).

When King is dealing with Americans in pursuit of profit and power in his stories, he often highlights the negative consequences and attitudes arising from the selfish ways of capitalists. What separates King ...

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...One…” 3).

Not all of Stephen King’s narratives consist of these apocalyptic ideas, but almost everything is referenced to Scripture. This reference is usually negative. It is marked as an “apocalyptic perspective.” Not meaning to be mystical or religious, King portrays an abundance of that classification. Examples are Argus-eyed hands and chest on astronaut Arthur in “I Am the Doorway.” Accounts of this are referable to the bible in Revelations (“One…” 4).

People need to learn from King’s novels. They give hard life lessons to any reader that is willing to explore deeper into his works. It is hard to find these moral lessons in his stories, but it is possible for the devoted reader. King sends a message saying that good people may die in painful ways, but bad people may prosper and live long lives. Life lessons like those are hard to learn, but they a necessary.