Springheel Jack in "Strawberry Spring" Considered to

¶ … Springheel Jack in "Strawberry Spring" considered to be an unreliable narrator? New Sharon College is in a fog due to a 'strawberry spring' (false spring) -- much like the narrator and killer himself. Stephen King's "Strawberry Spring" is a short story detailing the escapades of a serial killer of college students during a period of strawberry spring New Sharon College. Over the course of the narrative, several college students die and when another strawberry spring occurs several years later, again the murders begin to transpire.

The narrator end his tale on a chilling note: "My wife is upset. She wants to know where I was last night. I can't tell her because I don't remember.

I remember starting home from work, and I remember putting my headlights on to search my way through the lovely creeping fog, but that's all I remember." The narrator, over the course of the story, is revealed to be the murderer as he becomes more and more obsessed with the deaths of the serial killer Springheel Jack, and eventually at the end it is revealed that although he claims not to remember what he did -- he knows that it is he who is responsible for the deaths.

The actual plot of "Strawberry Spring" is relatively simple. When the narrator is still a student, everyone on campus is buzzing about the horrific crimes that took place in March. It is as if the sudden change in seasons actually gives birth to the crime. The rumors that fly are conveyed in the following sentence about the victim, which indicate the tizzy of speculation which ensues after such an unexpected event: "Gale Cerman (pronounced Kerr-man), and she was an art major. She wore granny glasses and had a good figure.

She was well liked but her room-mates had hated her. She had never gone out much even though she was one of the most promiscuous girls on campus. She was ugly but cute. She had been a vivacious girl who talked little and smiled seldom. She had been pregnant and she had had leukemia. She was a lesbian who had been murdered by her boy-friend.

It was strawberry spring, and on the morning of 17 March we all knew Gale Cerman." Of course, no one really 'knows' Gale at all, all is hearsay, as is reflected in these contradictory musings. The only thing clearly established is that she is dead. The ambiguity of what is actually occurring in the narrator's mind is further intensified when one of the lead suspects must be let go when another murder occurs while he is still apprehended.

Ann Bray is an entirely different type of girl than Gale and there is no apparent connection between the murders. The police foolishly speculate that the likely cause of the crimes is the radical political group SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) on campus, but given the lack of political activity at the community college, this is patently absurd. The police are in a fog -- much like the town during the strawberry spring itself.

However, despite law enforcement's lack of clarity, the narrator, after first identifying with the 'we' of his fellow college students throughout the story, slowly begins to show signs of romantic identification with the killer (now known as Springheel Jack) and speaks very sensitively of the killer's feelings. Of one victim, he says: "perhaps her need was as deep and as ungovernable as her killer's, and just as far beyond understanding.

Maybe a need for one desperate and passionate romance with the warm night, the warm fog, the smell of the sea, and the cold knife." It sounds like he is projecting his own emotions and feelings onto the victim, much like.