The hero is always misunderstood or internally conflicted, never truly irredeemable or disgusting.īy couching childish wish fulfillment and hate in crime, horror, fantasy, and the supernatural, King hit a sweet spot in the literary market and has kept tapping that same well year after year by providing high-fructose sociopolitical corn syrup for those who want to be told their worldviews and prejudices are all true. The bad guy is always a beer-belching macho man or a twisted killer, never a soft-spoken artist. The bully is always the intolerant religious creep, never the alternative hippie kid. This is voyeuristic pseudo-moralism that reinforces a progressive absolutism. The writing is insufferably self-righteous if you understand what King is actually doing in almost all his books, but that’s exactly his talent and why he became famous. Alternately, they are young people struggling to understand the horrible injustice of the adult world. The vast majority of his protagonists are tortured writers or individuals who have to defeat the past ghosts or current demons of injustice and horror in some way.
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