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Foreword: This was for my American Literature and Composition II class that I took last year. I was one of only three people in the class to get higher than a 75% on this paper. I'm rather proud of that fact. I received a 90%. This is the paper as it was when I wrote it the second time, this is the one that earned the 90%. I could have fixed it but I guess I didn't have the time. The bibliography is included.

November 21, 2006

Stephen King, throughout his career, has portrayed a side of American Society commonly referred to as “small town America”. This is shown in his works through three different fictitious locations that give insight into the positive and negative aspects of living where “everyone knows everyone”. Castle Rock, Derry, and ‘Salem’s Lot, all fictional small towns in the state of Maine are the locations Stephen King has created as a setting for some of the scariest stories that spawn from the fact that they are not set in cities. They are small and secluded keeping all they are afraid of out but keeping those who have not set it in their minds to escape in to face the evils already among them.

Castle Rock, Maine is one of the most disturbed towns in Stephen King’s world, containing some of the craziest and absurd situations he’s ever thought up…but this one hits a little close to home. Cujo, written after some of the rather supernatural tales set in Castle Rock is solely based on a situation that could actually happen in a small town such as Castle Rock (Wagner, et. al.142)—even does happen in Harper Lee’s town of Maycomb, perhaps the epitome of small town America represented in literature. A happy and bouncy St. Bernard chases a rabbit—this St. Bernard is around 200lbs and is the friendliest dog in Castle Rock, loved by all who inhabit it. That is until the poor dog gets bitten several times by some bats and is infected with rabies. The spot-light in this novel is put on a rather dysfunctional family of three, the Trentons(142). Donna and Tad, mother and son respectively are cornered in a small compact car, terrorized by the menacing dogs for two days, unable to escape their car they are subjected to heat and exhaustion (143). Finally, realizing she is risking her son’s life, Donna faces the dog and manages to defeat it, putting an end to Cujo’s saddened and undesirable life—but not before her son’s state of dehydration and exposure is fatal. Many characters in Cujo die in meaningless and gruesome ways but the way they die reflects the real world in which we live—no one’s life has a plot and seldom do any of us have a meaning behind our death or life that has a rhyme or reason. Stephen King does not base this story on the paranormal but on a circumstance that could happen in any small town in any place across America (144). In a city the dog would have been shot by some neighbor from some apartment who carries a .22 in his belt, in a small town there is no such chance. When one confronts evil, one goes it alone…maybe you live, maybe you die. It’s a chance we take just by being here.

Northeast of Castle Rock is a stream, more like a river that holds fish bigger than you’ve ever seen. There is a certain spot where Castle Stream splits and in the middle of the fork is a large rock. Near this boulder is the favorite fishing spot of the protagonist of the short story, “The Man in the Black Suit”. It is in this small clearing in the woods the stream runs through that our nine-year-old narrator, Gary, meets the devil (Spignesi, The Essential Stephen King 134). This tale is of the innocence of a child being confronted by the most evil thing most people can think of—Satan himself. When Gary falls asleep while fishing he wakes to find that he is not alone anymore—a stranger is in his midst and a bee is on his nose. Gary’s brother died a year earlier from a bee sting and Gary is terrified (Wagner, Golden, and Wiater 171). When the stranger claps his hands however, the bee dies and Gary realizes this man he has encountered is not human. The devil taunts Gary and tells him his mother is dead from a bee sting then tells him he’s going to kill him. Gary flees and runs all the way home to his father, and to his mother. (171)“But she was standing at the counter, just as well and fine as when I had left her…” ~ “The Man in the Black Suit”Sure, the devil may show up anywhere, but in the woods it is much easier to take care of something in secret, when a little nine-year-old boy doesn’t have his mother or father to stand behind him or to protect him, there’s no telling what he’ll believe. Without protection, innocence is soon lost to evil, especially the naïve sort of innocence Gary has grown up with in a small town close to Castle Rock, Maine in the year 1914. We all must face evil at one point or another and what an ideal place for Satan to make an appearance—to a small boy fishing in the middle of the woods, it just goes to show evil can find a home anywhere on Earth, and can set up camp when you least expect it (Spignesi, 135).

Castle Rock, Maine, throughout its life as a fictitious setting has become a symbol for rural America in horror literature, signifying the type of town that many countryside Americans grew up in and came to love. It shows the type of life that average people are living in the small towns of America, where gossip flows freely in the cafes and the private old lady get-togethers (Wagner, et. al. 153). In the town, something new doesn’t come often and this time it’s an old shop—like an antique store, and what resident in a small town doesn’t like to go antiquing at least once? Expertly articulating his thesis of the village as a microcosm of society, King takes us into the hearts and minds of a handful of the townspeople, simultaneously revealing the nobility and the evil in each of us. (153) Leland Gaunt, the new shop’s owner manipulates the town much like anyone would—when they have what everyone wants. He has in his antique shop different items that entrance the townspeople into doing whatever it takes to get that item. He charges an insanely small amount for the objects and also requests a favor of the buyer—a few mud slings at some clean sheets, some little things. The result is a domino effect (154). The townspeople are paranoid, they think they know who is doing what and soon, lives are lost. Gaunt, the equivalent of some of the other evil characters in King’s world such as Randall Flagg and Andre Linoge, is collecting the souls from the ones lost in the chaos, and only Alan Pangborn, the sheriff, is able to stop him with some help from the supernatural (156). It is a book of greed and small town corruption, making the “last Castle Rock story” end with a rather large bang (Spignesi 95).

Though the size of the next town, Derry, can be debated over—whether it is a city or a town that is—it is not the size that matters. Roughly the size of Bangor, Maine, Derry has had something festering within its depths for a long time. Strange things happen in Derry, things that would make normal people think long and hard about ever moving to Derry, including that its murder rate is six times the usual for a New England town similar in size (Wagner, Golden, and Wiater 96). The creepiest thing about Derry though, is what it stands for. King’s novel, It is the possibly the best example of members of a town facing up to the evil within their bubble of protection. Though It is said to come from “The Outside” it has been living in Derry’s sewers for a rather long time—feeding on the children who live there (www.stephenking.com, His Works). Derry and It, in the big picture, seem to be one. When one says It, another says Derry, and vice versa. Seven children face It in 1958, not knowing if they’ve defeated the beast they vow that if It ever showed up again they would come back to Derry and attempt to defeat it again. Though missing one of their own they come back and face It again as adults in 1985 (His Works). Even with It essentially destroyed, Derry still reeks of evil—it is even referred to in The Tommyknockers when the characters say they can “feel” It, a year after It has been extinguished (Wagner, Golden, and Wiater 104).

Insomnia is also set in Derry, placing it at the center of a battle between the “Random”, chaos, and the “Purpose”, order. The characters in Derry at this point remember all the evil that has taken place in Derry, especially the two main characters, the elderly Ralph Roberts and Lois Chasse, who have lived in Derry all their lives (Wagner, Golden, and Wiater 110). Ralph, suffering from nightmares of his dead wife has a problem sleeping, getting less and less of it as the nights go on. Soon he begins to see things, auras surrounding other people around him, and then, little men with bald heads and scissors in their hands. He realizes that these are not simply hallucinations brought on by his lack of sleep, these are real (His Works). Two of the little bald men work for the “Purpose”; one for the “Random”, Ralph names these men after the Fates in ancient Greek Mythology—for they are the ones who decide. This story is a complicated jumble of cosmic meanings and plot but it addresses some of the issues in today’s society that split towns and cities, right down the middle and pits neighbor against neighbor even in our real lives (Wagner, Golden, and Wiater 113). These issues include spousal abuse (which is later renewed in King’s later novel, Rose Madder in 1995), pro-life vs. pro-choice (though the pro-life people are portrayed as raving lunatics for the most part) (113). “…underneath its ordinary surface awesome and terrifying forces are at work.” ~Speaking of Derry on the flap of the hardcover version of Insomnia.

The last town is the smallest of them all, a surprise if even labeled on a fictitious map in the world(s) of Stephen King. ‘Salem’s Lot, Maine is the picturesque small town of rural America. ‘Salem’s Lot is such a small town that it could have disappeared long ago and no one in the world would have even noticed—it brings back memories of the small towns that Americans have passed through while on vacation or have lived in when they were small (Wagner, Golden, and Wiater 191). It is set back from the world, secluded from the rest of the evils of society. So much that it creates its own society, and its own evils. He weaves a tapestry of small-town life that is startlingly true and familiar and, perhaps the most important, safe. Within the sanctuary of this cozy setting, with its colorful characters and nostalgia—reinforced time and again by the memories of the central character—King breeds his horror. (191)By using actual landmarks in the state of Maine, such as the Royal River, Stephen King shows us a type of reality and connection (192). By showing us that it could exist in the real world gives us a thought—could the evils in this book mirror the evils in our own lives? The town derived its name from a mad sow named Jerusalem who escaped one day, thus gaining its name of Jerusalem’s Lot. It is soon corrupted by a vampire by the name of Kurt Barlow. It shows us that evil picks some of the strangest places to fester and grow, in such a little town of ‘Salem’s Lot it seems as if nothing could go wrong with their quaint little society…how misguided they were (193).

We’ve all been to a ‘Salem’s Lot before, just as we’ve all been to a Derry, or a Castle Rock, it doesn’t matter that they’re made up, or that you can’t find them on a map. They are all over the place, scattered across America like paint from the brush of Jackson Pollack. You can’t look on a map to find one either, you have to go out and look for one by yourself because chances are, they aren’t even on a map. No matter how wonderful a small town in the back woods may seem, there might be something lying underneath the surface, waiting for just the right moment to take advantage of the inhabitants. Stephen King shows us in his novels and short stories that evil can exist everywhere, even in the small, rural, and peaceful towns of America. “As King shows repeatedly in his novels and short stories, home can be where the horror is.” ~The Stephen King Universe

Bibliography

Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stanley Wiater. The Stephen King Universe. Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 2001.

Spignesi, Stephen J. The Essential Stephen King. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page
Books, 2003.

"His Works." Stephen King.com . 31 Oct. 2006. Silent Movement Associates. 2 Nov.
2006 <http://www.stephenking.com>.