The Craft of Storytelling through Memory - Essay Example

The Craft of Storytelling through Memory in Stephen King’s Novella the Body Stephen King’s novella, “The Body,” is portrayed through an interesting juxtaposition of narrative techniques. The narrator is an omnipresent voice in this story, while he relates events of his youth when he and some friends went out to track down the body of a dead peer. The narrator proves to be more than just a voice, however, he becomes a full realized character distinct from his earlier incarnation. At the same time, his younger version offers insight to his older self, for by his efforts to become a writer, he reveals aspects that will haunt the narrator for the rest of his life. The younger character does this both through his perceptions as an adolescent and through his fledgling writing attempts. The combination of these two elements, the perception of memory and the art of storytelling, prove to be such interesting elements of King’s writing that they bear closer examination. Memory plays a huge role in the story, as the plot is told through the point of view of an older Gordon Lachance. As such, the entire story could be said to spring from his memories, however accurate they may be. The narrator frequently will note a specific location of the past and update it with current information, such as the vacant lot where the boys had a treehouse now has “…a moving company on that lot today, and the elm is gone.” (289). These segues serves a dual purpose, for, not only do they remind the reader that many of the events are in the distant past, they also underline the point that the narrator is reminiscing from a later date. The first point indicates that the events are complete and cannot be changed; the latter implies that the narrator is perceiving the events from a more mature vantage, having had time to process his adolescent escapades. This allows the narrator a more critical and analytic approach to the description of the story as a whole, rather than if he had tried to write it from the younger Gordon’s point of view. While the younger Gordon’s version could have covered all of the main elements of the plot, the narrator, through examples of conversation and story samples inserted in the text, reveals that his youthful blossoming talent was both too inexperienced and too close to the events to offer a well rounded description. The narrator himself critiques his early efforts, calling them “melodramatic,” and “painfully sophomoric.” He writes “It was the work of a young man every bit as insecure as he was inexperienced.” (322). The author’s choice of mixing both points of view allows the narrative itself to shift back and forth from the present and past tenses. The perspective of memory, however, lends a saccharine nostalgia to the story. Why else would the narrator state confessing that he never had any friends like he had at that age. He attempts to create this feeling of nostalgia in the reader as well, frequently dropping songs such as Presley’s “Creole Queen” or Orbison’s “Only the Lonely.” He also pins down the time frame through the current events, mentioning Kennedy, Nixon and Castro. These selections are chosen specifically because they parallel themes in the story… that bad things happen, but they can be survived. The fact that it is an older Gordon reminiscing automatically alleviates concern for his character: he obviously survives the adventure to be able to tell the story in the future. But a useful function of the past tense is that it allows one to withdraw from the immediacy of the present. The narrator can describe the older gang’s reprisal with the ability to analyze it that would have proven impossible had he tried to write it close to the event. Likewise, the narrator was disturbed enough by recalling a leech on his genitals - he certainly doesn’t need to dwell on it more than necessary. But that is part of the import of examining the past: as he tells his editor, “The only reason anyone writes stories is so they can understand the past and get ready for some future morality.” (395). The narrator has had years to contemplate Chris’s observation of certain friends pulling one down… a portion of those years being spent helping Chris go onto college, while Vern and Teddy drift out of their lives. These years provide the narrator both the distance and the perspective for the story’s denouement: the description of how each of his childhood friends died. The narrator sifts these events for morality, and then notes that Ace Merrill is still alive and living in town. Gordon here describes his career, saying that while he has made a living at it, it has grown more difficult through the years; he imagines Ace being welcomed into a bar where he has been a regular for the last few decades. Just Gordon described to his editor, he is trying to understand the past by describing it. Yet while there were causes for his friends dying, there seems little reason between who lives and who dies, or the narrow difference of fate between Ace’s life and his own. The narrator seems not to have found understanding exactly, but instead a form of emotional catharsis. The format of this novella has been memory, but the medium has been the art of storytelling. The power of storytelling frequently makes use of literary devices, and this story is no exception. But with the multitude of themes and metaphors, such as the private communion of young Gordon’s with the deer or the narrator’s contemplation of the symbolic necessity of life’s choice though following such boundaries as the train tracks, perhaps it would be easier to focus on specific examples of “stories” within the text. The young Gordon often entertains Teddy with a series of “Le Dio” war stories; it could be argued that the narrator has continued to entertain his audience with the novella itself, as it has a conversational feel in its perspective shifts. But the narrator has decided to include two stories he published between then and now: “Stud City” (309) and “The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan” (365). Both of these stories are printed with original publication information (either real or fabricated), which is included to give credibility to the author’s claims of livelihood. But while the narrator critiques the first and works the second into the course plot, the author has chosen to include these stories because they illustrate certain themes of the story. The stories are given not only as examples of the narrator improving his craft but because they imply a continuity of these elements having subliminally affected the narrator through out his life. “Stud City” is intentionally written as the archetypal pretensions of a hormonal boy obsessed with sex and violence. Yet, despite the caricature of masculinity, it relates directly to some of the family dynamics and issues of young Gordon’s family. Chico’s brother Johnny is obviously representative of Gordon’s brother Denny: both have died in some relation to an automobile accident and their loss has had ramifications to the whole family unit. Chico’s father is symbolic of Gordon’s parents, who ignore him to the point that Gordon will have to go to extremes to get their attention. Chico’s step mother, whom Chico lashes out and blames for Johnny’s death, stands for fate - paralleling the irrational rage Gordon feels against the injustice of life. The young child Billy was Gordon’s innocence, what he used to be, while the extreme “tough guy” act of Chico is the projected ideal of Gordon coping with his own losses and insecurities. King’s narrator never recognizes this, quite possibly because it might strike too close to real issues he has had to tackle, but the implications are obvious to the reader, especially with the similarity of Johnny’s ghost in the closet following so soon after Gordon imagines seeing his own brother’s reappearance. The most obvious link in style to the narator‘s current writing form is the inclusion of song references, but where the older Gordon is content to simply reference song titles, the younger Gordon includes whole lyrics: “So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that‘s it hanging in the shed.” (319). “The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan” works along similar themes, but on a much lighter note. Here too, the central character is frustrated by fate, for he will be ridiculed and ostracized whether he wins the pie eating contest or not. Given the inevitability of these circumstances, Hogan chooses a path of minor revenge against his detractors. Despite earlier preparing his stomach with a bottle of castor oil and then voiding it during the contest, Hogan‘s stomach feels sweet and sticky… “that balm was a feeling of utter and complet satisfaction.” (373). By inducing a festival wide vomitorium, Hogan achieves what little justice he can in the face of insurmountable odds. This sense of injustice appears in the plot through such examples as Chris’s experience with the milk money; the sense of justice is manifested in Ray Brower’s body being surrendered to authorities without any benefit to either gang. Unfortunately, the retribution aspect foreshadows Ace and his gang’s revenge on the four boys, but there are also parallels of Gordon and Chris rising above their circumstances. Overall, while neither of young Gordon’s stories are integral to the plot of the novella, they are interesting segues that support certain psychological aspects of the characters, therefore making the characters more believable overall. Stephen King’s use of different techniques of storytelling, combined with the perspective of the narrator’s memories, creates an intertwined dichotomy within “The Body.” These elements exist in a feedback loop, each feeding off of and reinforcing the other, to the point where they can not easily be separated. While it could be argued that certain elements of the older narrator could be King’s own views - that the entire story can be said to be autobiographical - the narrator is a fully formed character in his own right. The town of Castle Rock, as it was in the days of the boys adventures, could be just as fictional as young Gordon’s town of Gretna, the town upon which Hogan exacts his revenge. What King has done is essentially take a central character’s narrative and twist it through several different approaches. As memories are often as much storytelling as fact, this approach proves to be highly effective. Works Cited King, Stephen. “The Body.” Different Seasons. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Read More