The hidden messages of stephen kings short stories

Plot summary[ edit ] In the outer circle of a nested narrativea woman named Sheila writes to her childhood friend Charlie about her brother, Johnny, a psychiatrist who recently committed suicide.

Charles Wickelus is the writer formerly known as 2Wycked.

The Hidden Connections in Stephen King’s Universe — The Airship

Follow him on Twitter Stephen King is one of the greatest writers of his generation—not necessarily because of his scintillating prose, but because of his masterful ability to tell a story.

While he has more than a few collections of short stories published, his best horror short stories were in his first few publications released. Here are five of his best: The Mist From his collection Skeleton Crew. This counts more as a novella, as it really is too long to be considered a short story, but it is included in this short story collection.

The story centers around a man and his son, who live next to a lake in a small town in Maine. After a particularly nasty thunderstorm, the two notice a curious mist hanging over the lake. As they leave for town to collect supplies to repair their home, they find themselves trapped in a grocery store as the mist has spread to the town and seemingly swallowed up those who venture into it.

The story ambles through the conflicts of those trapped in the store, the rapidly depleting food supplies, and the monsters that lurk in the mist.

As wonderful and macabre as the story is, the story has an abrupt and dissatisfying ending. Despite the careful balancing of narrative and horror, the ending of the story can leave a bitter taste in the mouth of a reader.

King himself admits in the preface that he—despite being a master storyteller—was unable to bring the conflict to a satisfying conclusion.

The ending notwithstanding, the story is an excellent example of what King is best at: The man eventually follows up with the company and learns they can help you quit smoking, but at a terrible price.

This story relies on our own fear of commonplace addictions like smoking and the toll it takes on our loved ones around us. This story begins with a distraught woman coming into a police station at 2 AM on a sleepy, quiet side of town. She recounts to the officers her terrifying night, claiming she lost her husband on a street entitled Crouch End.

After the woman departs, the officers decide to check the street out for themselves. The story ends after the officers realize too late that the woman was not lying about Crouch End. This story—told mostly in a flashback—is thoroughly creepy and tense. The story wraps up nicely, as the officers themselves confront the same terror the woman did in her flashback.

The story is very brief and involves a group of men drinking at the local bar on a blustery winter night. The young son of a local man bursts in, claiming his father has transformed into something terrible at their house.

This very brief story is simple and highly effective. It takes the simple concept of how alcohol abuse changes a person and puts a horrific spin on it. This story involves a beleaguered man traveling across the desert in Nevada.

He purchases the trinket for his son and makes the ill-fated decision to give a lift to a hitchhiker before resuming his jaunt across the desert.

The premise of a hitchhiker-cum-bloodthirsty rogue is nothing fresh, but the introduction of the wind-up walking teeth certainly is a new and strangely terrifying spin on the old saw.The following is a List of fictional books in the works of Stephen King.

This is emphatically not a list of works of fiction by Stephen King, but rather a list of books that appear within his stories, usually written by one of the characters in the story such as the novelist Paul Sheldon's books mentioned in Misery.

The Elements of Style (Recorded Books Edition)

N. is a novella written by Stephen King that appears in his collection Just After Sunset (). Hardware. reviled. and Windows Michigan and Florida open their an analysis of the philsophy and the life of socrates seasons against each other An analysis of enterprise and entrepreneuralism on Saturday the hidden messages in stephen kings short stories As of today.

it's based on a stephen king novella.

Just released my 2nd book - Books and Literature Message Board - GameFAQs

The film is based on Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which was published in his short story collection, Different Seasons. You're browsing the GameFAQs Message Boards as a guest.

Sign Up for free (or Log In if you already have an account) to be able to post messages, change how messages are displayed, and view media in . Wife/girlfriend abuse takes place in Cujo, Cycle of the Werewolf, The Dark Half, Desperation, Dolores Claiborne, Gerald’s Game, The Green Mile, Insomnia, It, Rose Madder, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Talisman, The Tommyknockers and many short stories.