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How is horror portrayed in the boogeyman stephen king
Stephen king critical essays
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Stephen King, a distinguished author of blood-curdling horror, writes novels and short stories based on his personal fears of everyday life (Kehoe). In the year of 1977, King created the pseudonym, Richard Bachman to publish additional books (Biography Today). The masquerading secret was so well-kept, no one knew until eight years later, when readers noticed the same writing style as King (Kehoe, Biography Today). Bachman’s first book, The Rage, was published in 1977 (Biography Today). Succeeding The Rage, Bachman published The Boogeyman in 1978 (Biography Today). In The Boogeyman, Lester Billings is a hard-working young man with three deceased children, a defenseless wife, and a guilty conscious.
Bachman’s interpretation of Billings, in The Boogeyman, is a passive-aggressive young man living with the guilty conscious of killing each of his children. Bachman’s style in The Boogeyman reflects back to his personal fears of the dark, squishy things, psychoanalysis, and death (Biography Today, Kehoe). According to Don Herron, Bachman’s style in The Boogeyman reflects back to his fe...
For my book talk assignment I read a realistic fiction novel named “Monster” by Walter Dean Myers.
Firstly the novel starts off with the children thinking that Boo is a monster but as it progresses, Boo becomes like a second father that loves the children. The book starts off with the children being scared of Boo Radley. He is like a mystery to the children and they try to get Boo to come out
Asma, Stephen. On Monsters :An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
The analysis showed that Shirley’s and Thomas’s work matched in a way that both the stories reflect identity crises and the psyche of a killer. The notable use of typical fictional horror elements such as tragic backstories, harbingers, unseen forces causing chaos and dreadfulness, terror and above all unrealistically portrayed personality disorders makes the stories a baroque blend of supernatural fantasy and moral reality.
Throughout Baldwin’s essay he strategically weaves narrative, analytical, and argumentative selections together. The effect that Baldwin has on the reader when using this technique is extremely powerful. Baldwin combines both private and public affairs in this essay, which accentuates the analysis and argument sections throughout the work. Baldwin’s ability to shift between narrative and argument so smoothly goes hand in hand with the ideas and events that Baldwin discusses in his essay. He includes many powerful and symbolic binaries throughout the essay that help to develop the key themes and principles pertaining to his life. The most powerful and important binaries that appear in this essay are Life and Death.
R.L. Stine is arguably one of the best horror fiction writers of all time. With his use of vivid imagination and lack of real-life experiences, Stine was still able to create works of horror that thrilled audiences after every read. Stine receives criticism on his work daily, with it being negative or positive. Robert is a very diverse writer, with many branches of different genres he writes about. From it being humor, all the way to horror, Stine never seems to fail to captivate his audience on any of his pieces of literature.
On a cold Halloween night in 1963, in the film Halloween, a six-year-old boy named Michael Myers was seen stabbing his older sister to death with a gigantic kitchen knife then leaving to stand outside the house with a blank expression on his face. As a result he was sent to Smith Grove’s Mental Hospital which he escapes from 15 years later to go after 17 year old Laurie Strode and her friends Lynda and Annie. Warshow’s essay, The Gangster as Tragic Hero, depicts American society’s need to show public cheerfulness and maintain a positive morale as well as its desire for something more sinister, something more brutal. This desire to indulge in the forbidden fruit of sadism and cruelty is what makes the gangster persona so appealing to the nation. He is the man of the city. He emerges from the crowd as a successful outlaw and his only aspiration is success through brutality.
Lovecraft, H.P.. “The Beast in the Cave.” The Transition of H.P. Lovecraft: The Road to
Nowadays, people are still enticed by fear, they have a curiosity for the supernatural, evil and frightening. Although modern day society is supposedly politically correct, we are still an immoral society and many of us would treat a creature like Frankenstein’s creation or a vampire like Dracula like a monster. In this way, the novels still have social significance.
People in Maycomb generally stick to their daily routines and stay away from anyone who seems suspicious or out of place. Because of this ideology, Boo Radley a mysterious, seemingly sinister figure that never comes out of hiding becomes the subject of the town’s never-ending streams of gossip, accusations and fallacies. For the children, Boo was a fascinating figure that seems to be the center of all their ghost stories, which they share like ones around a campfire. Boo is said to be a man who, “dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch…” This is a vicious, bloody image that is painted in the reader’s mind. Boo is described so vividly through the eyes of a variety of characters that this portrayal of him almost becomes the reality. For the children, fear is a sign of weakness and Boo is the source of their fear. As the time passes on, the children’s plans to force Boo out of hiding become more and more elaborate. Jem, Scout and Dill decide to role-play what Boo’s might be like. In a way, this helps the children cope with their fear. The more they think they know about Boo, the less fearful they become.
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born on August 30, 1797 to two renowned authors. Mary’s mother died while giving birth and from this point forward her life was destined for literature. Her father’s wife was cruel so Mary confided in her literature. Mary met her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley at the age of sixteen. While she and Percy sailed they would tell each other ghost stories. Mary, Percy, and some friends came up with a challenge to see who could compose the scariest ghost story. Out of this challenge arose Frankenstein which she began in 1816. Mary finished the novel before the age of twenty, where it would become one of the most popular Gothic Horror novels of all times. During the era Shelley lived science was progressing vastly. Science then became permanently linked to Gothic horror because of the supernatural.
At a time when the stalker movie had been exploited to all ends and the image of mute, staggering, vicious killers had been etched into society’s consciousness to the point of exhaustion, a new kid entered the block. The year was 1984 and it was time for a new villain to enter into the horror genre. A villain that was agile, intelligent, almost inviolable yet viscous, and by all means deadly. A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced the distinctive presence of Fred Krueger to the horror industry and to the audience. Freddy Krueger took the center stage and with him a new era of horror films began. This horribly scarred man who wore a ragged slouch hat, dirty red-and-green striped sweater, and a glove outfitted with knives at the fingers reinvented the stalker genre like no other film had. Fred Krueger breathed new life into the dying horror genre of the early 1980’s.
Throughout The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, there are many different tactics used to show how intense and suspenseful the book really is. Neil Gaiman does an excellent job of creating a nail-biting mood during the duration of the book. Intense events and exquisite details contributed to Gaiman’s success of the doing this. The situations Nobody Owens finds himself in also helps, to make The Graveyard Book, a classic suspenseful fiction book.
Ressler, R. K. & Shachtman, T. (1997). I have lived in the monster. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Stephen King is known as one of the greatest horror and gothic writers of our time. The reason for this is his ability to fuse the gothic elements created by stories such as Dracula or Frankenstein and todays horror. King has written hundreds of short stories but two in-particular “The Night Flier” and “Popsy” show his unique ability to combined gothic elements from the old literature with realistic settings and people of our era. One of his greater talents is being able to use gothic element like vampires and make us see them in a different light. Kings unique way of writing with his old gothic ideals, new horror ideas, and use of realistic settings help to put a new spin on what we conceive as gothic story.