Skip to main content

Book Review: The Dead Zone by Stephen King

The Dead Zone by Stephen King is a horror cum suspense novel. It is one of the best works of him because the lead character in the novel is a kind of tragic hero, unlike the usual larger-than-life characters. In many a sense, the book is high on literary value as it does not exaggerate any of the both aspects: thrill and frightening.


John Smith is the central character of the book, by name he sounds quite common but he is blessed with a second sight, which at times acts as a curse for him as well. He got that second sight because of two accidents in his life. First, after a skating accident in childhood, and then as an adult one night he was returning from a village carnival in a taxi and then he met with a deadly accident. The accident pushes him into a comma state for the period of four years.

While he is in comma for four years, he loses everything he had then like career, girlfriend, access to life, etc. He wakes up hedonistically pauper in material terms, but on the other side he becomes blessed with the full-fledged version of his hidden childhood gift. And now his second career kicks up as a clairvoyant.

The second sight helps him to unearth the deep levels of darkness in the human souls. It is a kind of horrific discovery for him, since he could not believe himself that humans can stoop to such low levels for appeasement of their motifs and gains. He has a void feeling for his life until he meets Greg Stillson, soon-to-be a president of America. When he casually shakes hand with him, John could see the future of America. Immediately, John comes to know that Stillson is the wrong candidate for the country. His take is to finish Greg before he finishes the civilization of the world.

The novel consists of horror elements but not the supernatural ones. Though he has a supernatural power but that is for good use: to detect the evil in others. And Greg Stillson is the monster in this story to keep the balance.


One must praise Stephen King's gift of seeing into the future. When this novel was written, people would have laughed at the idea of selecting a rude and unscrupulous president in a secular democracy of America. Probably, for this reason, Stephan King doesn’t stand in the support of current president Donald Trump. 

Among all the books of King, this book has been written with such craftsmanship that the meeting of John (the hero of the book) and Greg (villain) sounded credibly predestined. And the end was totally unexpected like other novels. In addition, the last chapter is written with a sense of a poet at heart, this is the time when King rises to its occasion, the words shot through the heart, like streams flow in the river.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
67 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
63 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more