Term Papers on Stephen Kings Multiple Levels Of Horror

Term Paper Title	Stephen Kings Multiple Levels Of Horror
# of Words	3231
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	12.92

Stephen King's Multiple Levels of Horror

Stephen King, an extraordinary writer of the horror genre,

is very well known for his ability to captivate the reader in his

fantasy worlds of horror and realistic worlds of terror. King's

tales of horror and violence are quite frightening from a

fictional and realistic standpoint. The novels have their fair

share of monsters and magic, but remove them, and the reader

still has a rock solid, scary story. (Algon 131) In The Shining,

King casts a family of three, fighting to stay afloat financially

and emotionally, into a hotel where evil spirits of past events

dwell. Jack Torrance, the father of the Torrance Family, gets

involved in a scuffle with a student at the institute he teaches

at, seriously injuring the boy. This event occurs as a result of

his poor alcohol problem. After fighting with the student, Jack

is promptly dismissed from the school. When it seems like

everything is at its worse, Jack's old drinking friend, Al

Shockley, gets Jack a job as the winter caretaker at The Overlook

Hotel. The perfect chance for Jack to finish his play and rebuild

his family. The events that happen thereafter involve Jack

Torrance, the husband, father, and winter caretaker, being

infested with notions of violence and murder. "Isolation is a big

part of the novel. Jack's craziness is seen coming long ahead,

but cannot be avoided because they cannot escape. If it weren't

for the isolation, much of the sheer terror would be lost."

(Miller 61). Although most of the story takes place in the early

1970's, the domestic horror in an isolated area is applicable to

any time. In The Shining, Stephen King employs multiple levels of

horror to provide the narrative with paranormal horror as well as

domestic horror.

King uses Grady, the former caretaker, and The Overlook

Hotel, Grady's former locale of employment, as a source of

paranormal horror in the novel. Grady is used as a ghost of past

events to register horror on a paranormal level. In the opening

chapter, "Job Interview," Stephen King informs the reader through

Jack's job interview that the previous caretaker, Delbert Grady,

experienced a severe case of "cabin fever". This event, which

happened years before the Torrance's arrival, doesn't reveal any

ghosts or spirits, but merely a man going crazy, and taking out

his rage on his defenseless family. The incident which Stuart

Ullman, the current general manager of The Overlook Hotel, refers

to as a "horrible tragedy" is a terrifying account. "He killed

them, Mr. Torrance, and then committed suicide. He murdered the

little girls with a hatchet, his wife with a shotgun, and himself

the same way." (King 9) Jack then assures Mr. Ullman that this

kind of tragedy will not occur with him and his family, due to

his better education and variety of things to keep him occupied

during the restless winter months. "It seems as though Grady had

just snapped and violently slaughtered his family, an explicit

display of violence." (Collings 93) King uses this event to

depict the domestic violence which occurred years ago in The

Overlook. The Overlook acts upon Grady's already unstable mental

status to ignite the insanity within the caretaker. Thus, The

Overlook's paranormal evil influences the monstrous Grady to

"correct", or murder, his family. Readers soon discover that

paranormal activities played a large part in this terrifying

incident. (Smolen 74) Jack is immediately frightened and aroused

at the same time by this display of domestic violence. This event

rubs off on Jack. Once Jack is on the fringe of insanity, Grady,

now a spirit of the hotel only Jack sees, urges Jack to do the

same with his family...

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