Stephen King- Short Stories Stephen

Stephen King- SHORT STORIES Stephen King is well-known for his horror fiction. Some of his short stories were published in a collection titled Night Shift. In this paper we shall compare two of the stories that were available in this collection. The stories are Quitters Inc. And Gray Matter. In most of King's short stories, the protagonist is usually a victim. He has either observed or experienced something horrifying that leads to a twist in the end.

King's stories are manipulated with ease to generate the desired response from his readers. Evil is the dominant force in his work as King admits: "Evil is a tremendously attractive force -- a tremendously potent force. You've got more and more books where evil wins, where evil proves to be the stronger." ("Shine of the Times") Quitters Inc. is a story of a middle-aged smoker who wants to quit but doesn't have the will power to do it on his own. Hid friend recommends an organization Quitters Inc.

that he could join to stop smoking since the firm had a 98% success rate. The organization was started by someone who had himself died of lung cancer and wanted to save others;- thus leaving his money for a noble cause. But the protagonist later discovers that the firm is not that noble after all and many of its tactics are downright criminal in nature. If a smoker planning to quit tries even one cigarette, one of his family members is given an electric shock.

If he continues, then with each attempt the torture increase finally culminating in the murder of a loved one. He also finds out that if the weight gained during the quitting process is not lost rapidly, one finger of the spouse is cut off. The twist comes when the protagonist notices that even his friend's wife has her small finger missing. The brutal tactics are King's characteristic way of inserting some violence in his stories to elicit a shocked response.

Horror was King's way of releasing and relieving negative feelings as he wrote: "Horror is one of the ways we walk our imagination. It's a way to relieve bad feelings rather than something that causes them." (quoted in Matthews: 1982) Gray Matter similarly deals with addiction. However in this case there are two protagonists, one is a victim of addiction and the other may become a victim of this victim. Henry is the person who owns a local store from where Richie's son buys beers for his father.

Richie is a recluse who is living on disability funds. He is completely confined to his room and rarely ever comes out. No one has seen him for years. The only person who knows about his current state is his son. The little boy tells Henry how Richie has turned into an abominable blob of flesh consuming beer and dead cats. Once this is known, Henry and other local men decide to deliver beer to Richie themselves. When the reach his apartment, they smell a strong stench.

When Richie steps out, everyone gasps in horror as they discover that Richie is no longer a human but has turned into a blob of fungus. In the end as everyone runs away, Henry stays and pulls out his pistol to shoot the creature. However the story ends with the readers not knowing how survived the encounter. Some of the important features of King's stories are violence, brutality, shocking human behavior and the.