Scintillations (Alpha)
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Page 39<br />
— Stephen King —<br />
The King<br />
RAMEEZ MOHAMED<br />
Stephen King has done<br />
and still does what most<br />
modern classics like<br />
Game of Thrones,<br />
Breaking Bad and Mr.<br />
Robot are doing, before it<br />
was cool (a hipster after<br />
my own heart). He uses<br />
fantastical settings to tell<br />
human stories driven by<br />
the rawest of human<br />
emotions with<br />
compelling characters to<br />
match. What sets him apart from his<br />
contemporaries is that he isn’t afraid<br />
to punish and make his characters<br />
suffer, which allows for amazing<br />
monologue and character-driven<br />
narratives like no other.<br />
Any true fan of the horror genre will<br />
tell you that the scariest thing that man<br />
could conceive was the depths that he<br />
would go to, to attain his pleasures.<br />
And his coup de grace, It, is an<br />
epitome to this. The monster who is<br />
primarily the antagonist of the novel<br />
pales in comparison to the savagery<br />
made bare by the narrator to illustrate<br />
how truly feral human nature can be.<br />
The appalling narratives that we come<br />
across in his books are interlaced with<br />
messages, tackling topics like<br />
domestic brutality, racism,<br />
homophobia, and many<br />
other beliefs that reduce<br />
mankind to the degenerative<br />
beings that we are being as we<br />
speak (no one can Trump<br />
that).<br />
While It focused on fear and<br />
paranoia, Green Mile instead<br />
focused on compassion and<br />
forgiveness- emotions on the<br />
other end of the spectrum.<br />
“Sometimes there’s no<br />
difference between salvation and<br />
damnation” says the protagonist of the<br />
story, and this is essentially the moral<br />
conflict prevalent throughout the story<br />
as King provides social commentary<br />
on the death penalty, going so far as<br />
torturing his inmates mentally and<br />
physically to drive his point home.<br />
Perseverance was the crux of The<br />
Shawshank Redemption, with the<br />
story revolving around Andy Duffers<br />
as he tries to escape the horrific jail<br />
that he was sent to. When he finally<br />
escapes after going through hell, it<br />
doesn’t take much for the reader to<br />
break into tears (someone was cutting<br />
onions in my room). “Get busy living<br />
or get busy dying” are words that will<br />
always resonate with its readers.
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