Research paper analyzing the writiing style of Stephen King - Essay Example

On the one hand, critics question King’s writing style as “The Comic Strip Effect” and “The Disgusting Colloquialism” (Hoppenstand and Browne 2). On the other hand, King is also praised for his “dazzling” storytelling skills (Hoppenstand and Browne 2). Since 1987, most of his novels were chief selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club, which in 1989 made the Stephen King Library, and is dedicated to keeping King’s novels “in print in hardcover” and some were even produced as films, such as The Shining (Badley et al. 1). This paper analyzes King’s writing style.

King’s writing style is described as seeking to terrorize, horrify, and lead his readers to gross-some reactions, which magnifies his use of ethos and pathos, while having logos residing “between the lines.” Stephen King is the King of macabre; he spins stories from “American nightmares” (Hoppenstand and Browne 2). As the king in this genre, he has ethos or authority in the ghastly dimension of human experiences: “His work has changed the horror genre and blurred the lines between horror and literary fiction” (Dyson and Bloom 5).

His ethos conceals the logos of his stories. He writes about stories of real human conditions that not all horror stories touch upon. King’s thoughts go beyond the archetypal. His “pop” awareness and his campy humor entice the collective unconscious (Badley et al. 4). In Danse Macabre, King stresses the “cross-pollination of fiction and film,” and he categorizes his subject into four “monster archetypes”: the ghost, the “thing” (or human-made monster), the vampire, and the werewolf (Badley et al. 4). He uses references from classic horror films of the 1930’s and the 1950’s pulp and film industries (Badley et al. 4). He combines the gothic novel, classical fables, Brothers Grimm folktales, and the oral tradition (Hohne 95).

During this time, the characters doubt the myths but need them in their lives; horror is particularly comforting and “cathartic” and the narrator marries the roles of physician and priest into the witch doctor as “sin eater,” who takes over the culpability and fear of the culture (Badley et al. 4). As a result, Stephen re-creates old monsters by adding a new sense of mystique. In The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976), psychologist Bruno Bettelheim stresses that the enchantment and horrors of fairy tales present existential problems in forms children can understand.

King’s paranormal horrors have comparable cathartic and informative roles for adults; “they externalize the traumas of life, especially those of adolescence” (Badley et al. 4). Danse Macabre represents the externalization of these traumas, as a way of coping and survival. People have to analyze and read between-the-lines, nevertheless, to understand the themes of survival and adaptation in some of King’s novels. King writes to terrorize readers. King’s critics say that his success relies on the “sensational appeal of his genre,” which King eagerly confesses, because he writes to “scare people” (Badley et al. 4). His fiction is explicit, maudlin, and at times, known for conventional plots (Badley et al. 4). In Carrie, he writes about the opposite of Cinderella.

It is the macabre version of dreams that can hardly come true for a society that denigrates women like Carrie. Furthermore, King’s humor is frequently unsophisticated and “