While reading On Writing, I noticed that Stephen King always maintains his calm tone throughout the entirity of the text. In one passage, King discusses death with his mom, and throughout the passage there did not seem to be any remorse regarding the subject.
King discusses two deaths within the passage. One was a young girl who drowned, and he discusses how his mother, who witnessed the tragedy, was "waiting for a rescue boat that never came and listening to that girl scream until her strength gave out and she went under." After this, he talks about how his mother read him a comic book.
The other death was a sailor who committed suicide by jumping off of the roof in Maine. "'He splattered,' my mother said in her most matter-of-fact tone."
With a "matter-of-fact" tone? One of Stephen King's personal fears is the fear of death, so I don't understand how someone exposed to death can write calmly about it. Stephen King discusses in his novel on channeling emotions and writing how you feel. He also elaborates on the fact of using personal experiences to embellish the writing.
So with that being said, wouldn't it be beneficial to the reader to write with some remorse? Stephen King is a renowned horror writer, but dealing with fictional events such as this, I expected something more.
I know what it's like to see a dead body, to have the presence of death looming in the same room. Sucking the life out of everything within the space. I expected King to pick up on the elements of this, but instead he briefly discussed their deaths. I just expected more gloom, not just a tiny vague paragraph regarding such a strong subject.
I really like this topic and I like how you had two really good examples to support your stance. It was really smart to include the quotes that you did because they supported your opinion that King keeps an inappropriate calm tone. But for the example of the girl drowning, you would have had more substance if you included the quotes where King talks about his mother reading him a comic book. This way you could analyze his word choice and other mechanisms that he uses to make your case even stronger.
ReplyDeleteI also really liked how you used a couple questions to show what you were thinking about King's tone. For the length of this article, two questions seems appropriate because you could have easily gone overboard and made your stance less convincing.
Including your and King's personal experiences with death was also very effective. Incorporating this gave you credibility because it proves that you have background knowledge and supports the inappropriateness of King's calm tone.