I choose to read and write about Stephen King. He is one of the greatest horror writers of all-time, even being able to have written books that would eventually become movies, like Christine and Cujo. I enjoy reading a scary book; they lead to great mysteries and lots of action.
For the most recent book I read, Christine, I have a couple questions:
1) How did the 1958 Plymouth become a evil, murderous death trap?
2) Why did Arnie, one of the main protagonists, become attracted to the car?
A few questions about Stephen King:
1) Why do most of his stories take place in his home-state of Maine?
2) Did anything in his childhood attract him to scary thoughts and ideas that appear regularly in his writing?
The character that caught my attention the most was Arnie Cunningham from Christine. In the story, he actually had 3 different sides to him in the story. In the beginning (before getting the murderous car), Arnie was a pimple-pizza faced nerd that was constantly bullied by most students at his high school, only being saved by the star athlete Dennis Guilder. He was a smart guy that was college-bound to basically any school that he would choose. On the flip side, he always wanted to fix cars for his career path. His parents did not like that idea and was trying to force him to go to college.
ReplyDeleteThe second Arnie started to come in as he bought an extremely beat up 1958 Plymouth (Christine). He spent more time on the car than his friend and his eventual girlfriend Leigh. The more time Arnie spent on fixing the car, the more his pimples went away, but that was the same as his personality. Before the car, he always found things to do on rainy days and played a lot of chess for the chess team. Once Christine was there, he became lifeless, only wanting to be with the car.
The final form is not even Arnie anymore, but he became more like Ronald LeBay, the person he bought the car from. Mr. LeBay was a military vet that became a alcoholic, never cared for his wife and child as he cared a lot for Christine, and called everyone that did not agree with him (explicit)ers. Not a nice guy for sure.
The first Arnie connected with me (just a little) because of not having many friends while being content with having close friends. He is the main character in the story, not totally sure if he is the protagonist or antagonist.
Stephen King is definitely a fantastic role model for anybody looking to become an author, especially people interested in the horror genre. However, Cujo is sort of puzzling for me.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is not that the story is not scary enough. In-fact, Cujo has a lot of horrific scenes. An example of this is when the rabid dog (Cujo) attacks Vic's wife Donna and son Tad in the broken-down Ford Pinto. More scary parts involve (Cujo) murdering Gary and Joe.
The main issue with Cujo is that the basic plot of the move does not make any sense, and that is just for the book since I have not seen the movie yet. The plot is scrambled; while the story is supposed to be about the rabid attacks from a evil creature, much of the story does not relate to the monster dog at all. One of the main protagonists, Vic was not around to witness the fright. He was in Boston for a business trip to repair the reputation of the cereal company. I need to know how Vic is involved (I am not finished with reading the book yet, so maybe something will happen.)
I have one main question for this book:
1) What was Stephen King's inspiration for writing this?
- Did he see a dog die in a haunted house?
- Was he ever bitten by a animal with rabies?
- Was he afraid of dogs as a child?
Mr. King uses grossly and disgustingly descriptive details very often when he writes a story; he also uses his fair share of dialogue, but the descriptions definitely carry the stories. For example, in Doctor Sleep, he talk about how messed up Dan was after being completely wasted from a night of shame, and dialogue was not even used much. Stephen King's sentence structure sometimes uses a lot of italicized text to get across important thoughts and dialogue from characters; sometimes, that text separates a paragraph (occasionally mid-sentence) to emphasis it even more.
ReplyDeleteHis style of writing keeps the reader engaged more to certain parts of the book or chapter. This makes the mood more intense and serious. The tone is pessimistic since there is rarely a happy moment in any of his stories.
Research question(s) for Stephen king: What type of events lead to the inspiration for becoming a horror author? Some of his stories he wrote?
ReplyDeleteWith these main questions that I want answered, I am trying to dig deep into his brain and find out what Mr. King was thinking and how those thoughts got written. Some ideas for my visual could be...
- storage/garage that stored Christine
- brain
- haunted house/hotel
There are other ideas, but those are the best one that I thought of so far; the storage/garage and haunted house/hotel was based off a couple of his stories, and the brain best describes what thoughts were running through his mind. The storage/garage could have a horror-writing workshop that explains why he mainly wrote works in the horror/scary genres. The brain could show what Stephen was thinking while he was writing. The haunted house/hotel could be the Hotel Dolphin on 61st Street in New York City (where 1408 was inspired) that shows the scariest books he ever wrote with explanations why he created them.
After a little bit of more research, I decided on my visual being none of the ideas I had thought of before; instead, I will make a comic book. At 6 or 7 years old, Stephen King started writing and making stories by cutting out comics strips and adding his own dialogue and plots to the pictures. A horror comic book is uncommon yet very fitting for a writer like Stephen King. All writers must remember where they had started from.
DeletePROS & CONS: How it helped me develop as a reader?
ReplyDeletePro: The most important part of this process was that it got me to read more. Before this, I never read anything. However, after rediscovering Stephen King, reading is not a complete snore festival anymore.
Con: Nothing. This assignment would not decrease my desire to read (since it was so low to start with), and I was able to choose the author I wanted to read.
PROS & CONS: How it encouraged me to communicate with others about reading?
Pros: Nothing.
Cons: There are no pros because there is quite a few people that cannot handle Stephen King's writing style and content. Sharing this information was not worth my time.
PROS & CONS: How it helped me to learn more about a specific author?
Pros: There was no benefit for me to learn about any author, but it was interesting since I choose Stephen King. Because of how well he most of his stories, I bought On Writing to learn more about his life. No pros, but it was worth it!
Cons: Nothing.
PROS & CONS: How it fostered research and organizational skills?
Pros: It did not give me more research and organizational skills, but it did keep my skills up to date and will be good for when I go to college.
Cons: Nothing. Just because I do not have pros does not mean I have any cons. It helped my reinforce my skills for later in my life.