The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King

The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King PDF Author: Rebecca Frost
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793646228
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King: Murder, Sickness, and Plots examines over thirty of King’s works and looks at the character deaths within them, placing them first within the chronology of the plot and then assigning them a function. Death is horrific and perhaps the only universal horror because it comes to us all. Stephen King, known as the Master of Horror, rarely writes without including death in his works. However, he keeps death from being repetitious or fully expected because of the ways in which he plays with the subject, maintaining what he himself has called a childlike approach to death. Although character deaths are a constant, the narrative function of those deaths changes depending on their placement within the plot. By separating out the purposes of early deaths from those that come during the rising action or during the climax, this book examines the myriad ways character deaths in King can affect surviving characters and therefore the plot. Even though character deaths are frequent and hardly ever occur only once in a book, King’s varying approaches to, and uses of, these deaths show how he continues to play with both the subject and its facets of horror throughout his work.

The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King

The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King PDF Author: Rebecca Frost
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793646228
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King: Murder, Sickness, and Plots examines over thirty of King’s works and looks at the character deaths within them, placing them first within the chronology of the plot and then assigning them a function. Death is horrific and perhaps the only universal horror because it comes to us all. Stephen King, known as the Master of Horror, rarely writes without including death in his works. However, he keeps death from being repetitious or fully expected because of the ways in which he plays with the subject, maintaining what he himself has called a childlike approach to death. Although character deaths are a constant, the narrative function of those deaths changes depending on their placement within the plot. By separating out the purposes of early deaths from those that come during the rising action or during the climax, this book examines the myriad ways character deaths in King can affect surviving characters and therefore the plot. Even though character deaths are frequent and hardly ever occur only once in a book, King’s varying approaches to, and uses of, these deaths show how he continues to play with both the subject and its facets of horror throughout his work.

Different Seasons

Different Seasons PDF Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501141171
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
Includes the stories “The Body” and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”—set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine A “hypnotic” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas—including the inspirations behind the films Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption—from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters. This gripping collection begins with “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge—the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption. Next is “Apt Pupil,” the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town. In “The Body,” four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me. Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in “The Breathing Method.” “The wondrous readability of his work, as well as the instant sense of communication with his characters, are what make Stephen King the consummate storyteller that he is,” hailed the Houston Chronicle about Different Seasons.

Stephen King's Contemporary Classics

Stephen King's Contemporary Classics PDF Author: Philip L. Simpson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442244917
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Many readers know Stephen King for his early works of horror, from his fiction debut Carrie to his blockbuster novels The Shining, The Stand, and Misery, among others. While he continues to be a best-selling author, King’s more recent fiction has not received the kind of critical attention that his books from the 1970s and 1980s enjoyed. Recent novels like Duma Key and 1/22/63 have been marginalized and, arguably, cast aside as anomalies within the author’s extensive canon. In Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics: Reflections on the Modern Master of Horror, Philip L. Simpson and Patrick McAleer present a collection of essays that analyze, assess, and critique King’s post-1995 compositions. Purposefully side-stepping studies of earlier work, these essays are arranged into three main parts: the first section examines five King novels published between 2009 and 2013, offering genuinely fresh scholarship on King; the second part looks at the development of King’s distinct brand of horror; the third section departs from probing the content of King’s writing and instead focuses on King’s process. By concentrating on King’s most recent writings, this collection offers provocative insights into the author’s work, featuring essays on Dr. Sleep, Duma Key, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Joyland, Under the Dome, and others. As such, Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics will appeal to general fans of the author’s work as well as scholars of Stephen King and modern literature.

Black Wings Beating

Black Wings Beating PDF Author: Alex London
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
ISBN: 0374306834
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
*An NBC Today Show Book Club Pick!* *A Seventeen Magazine Best YA Book of 2018!* *A Kirkus Best YA Fantasy Book of the Year* *A We Need Diverse Books 2018 Must-Read* "Epic thrills, heart-punching romance, and a marvel of a hero" --Adam Silvera, New York Times-bestselling author of They Both Die at the End The people of Uztar have long looked to the sky with hope and wonder. Nothing in their world is more revered than the birds of prey and no one more honored than the falconers who call them to their fists. Brysen strives to be a great falconer—while his twin sister, Kylee, rejects her ancient gifts for the sport and wishes to be free of falconry. She’s nearly made it out, too, but a war is rolling toward their home in the Six Villages, and no bird or falconer will be safe. Together the twins must journey into the treacherous mountains to trap the Ghost Eagle, the greatest of the Uztari birds and a solitary killer. Brysen goes for the boy he loves and the glory he's long craved, and Kylee to atone for her past and to protect her brother's future. But both are hunted by those who seek one thing: power. In this first young-adult fantasy novel in a trilogy, Alex London launches a soaring saga about the memories that haunt us, the histories that hunt us, and the bonds of blood between us.

Stephen King and American Politics

Stephen King and American Politics PDF Author: Michael J. Blouin
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1786836475
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
From The Long Walk to The Outsider, Stephen King’s output reflects the major political concerns of the previous fifty years. This book is the first sustained study of the complex ways in which King’s texts speak to their unique political moments. By exploring this aspect of the author’s popular works, readers might better understand the numerous crises that Americans currently face – the book surveys King’s corpus to address a wide range of issues, including the spread of neoliberalism, the Bush-Cheney doctrine, and the chaos of the populist present. Although the fiction outwardly declares itself to be anti-political (thus reflecting a widespread shift away from democracy in the aftermath of the 1960s), political energies persist just beneath the surface. Given the possibility of a political resurgence that haunts so many of his page-turners, Stephen King produces horror and hope in equal measure.

Not Your Mary Sue

Not Your Mary Sue PDF Author: Rebecca Frost
Publisher: Aesthetic Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
A not so classic girl meets boy story begins when a televangelist’s adult daughter, Marcy, journeys to a secluded island resort where she awakens a captive of a handsome, charming, notorious serial killer who requests she pen his autobiography explaining all of his intentions and crimes in detail. She finds herself horrified that she is intrigued by him and maybe even...infatuated by him. He has more control than she realizes as he slowly begins to brainwash her just as the autobiography is completed. Once she is rescued and he is arrested, Marcy begins to pull her life back together only for her captor to escape and her brother becomes a new suspect in a murder. Author Rebecca Frost is a True Crime author. This is her first fiction novel.

America's Dark Theologian

America's Dark Theologian PDF Author: Douglas E. Cowan
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479894737
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
America's dark theologian: reading Stephen King religiously -- Thin spots: what peeks through the cracks in the world -- Deadfall: ghost stories as God-talk -- A jumble of blacks and whites: becoming religious -- Return to Ackerman's field: ritual and the unseen order -- Forty years in Maine: Stephen King and the varieties of religious experience -- If it be your will: theodicy, morality, and the nature of God -- The land beyond: cosmology and the never-ending questions

The Sun Dog

The Sun Dog PDF Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982115432
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King’s novella The Sun Dog, published in his award-winning 1990 story collection Four Past Midnight, now available for the first time as a standalone publication. The dog is loose again. It is not sleeping. It is not lazy. It’s coming for you. Kevin Delavan wants only one thing for his fifteenth birthday: a Polaroid Sun 660. There’s something wrong with his gift, though. No matter where Kevin Delevan aims the camera, it produces a photograph of an enormous, vicious dog. In each successive picture, the menacing creature draws nearer to the flat surface of the Polaroid film as if it intends to break through. When old Pop Merrill, the town’s sharpest trader, gets wind of this phenomenon, he envisions a way to profit from it. But the Sun Dog, a beast that shouldn’t exist at all, turns out to be a very dangerous investment.

Stephen King

Stephen King PDF Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 143811348X
Category : Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Though often disparaged by literary critics, Stephen King's work has influenced a generation of horror and science fiction writers. Acting as a study guide, this book features the important critical interpretations of the horror master's work.

The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone PDF Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1668035073
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
"A #1 national bestseller about a man who wakes up from a five-year coma able to see people's futures and the terrible fate awaiting mankind in the dead zone--a "compulsive page-turner" (the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)"--