Firestarter

“Pretty girls could get away with this; if it had been Duane’s day on the front desk, he could not have done. Cap was not a supporter of women’s liberation.”

Cap infantilizes the women who work at the front desk, which is in line with how he is portrayed as a villain. King uses free indirect discourse, enmeshing Cap’s thoughts about “pretty girls” within the text. This offers readers an insight into the paternal, patronizing figures who make up the governing authorities. Cap’s emphatic stance against women’s liberation suggests a governing body that is out of touch and does not care for the rights of its citizenry.

“A surprisingly wide range of phenomena: precognition, telekinesis, mental domination, bursts of super-human strength, temporary control over the sympathetic nervous system.”

Dr. Wanless summarizes the parapsychological phenomena that, at the time of King’s composition, people believed comprised human extra-sensory abilities. King, through Wanless, recites the abilities that speak to controlling others, underscoring the Shop’s primary interest.

“The father is the authority figure. He holds the psychic reins of every fixation in the female child. Oral, anal, genital: behind each, like a shadowy figure standing behind a curtain, is the father-authority figure.”

Wanless shares a dubious Freudian vision of the father figure, though it underscores the importance of father figures in King’s novel. Andy is positioned as the barrier to Charlie’s coming-of-age. King lays out the conditions of her burgeoning adolescence: She must move beyond her father’s influence.

“I wonder how they’d like it if I set them on fire? a part of her asked coolly, and she squeezed her eyes shut in guilty horror. It was nasty to think that way. It was bad.”

King again uses free indirect discourse, in this case to show us Charlie’s thoughts. Andy and Vicky have instilled a sense of shame in Charlie in regards to her abilities, which she feels now. The above passage shows her inner conflict: She doesn’t want to use her powers, but they tantalize her, and this makes her feel like a bad person.

“She’s enjoying this, Andy thought with something like horror. Is that why she’s so afraid of it? Because she likes it?”

Andy has an important revelation about his daughter—that she derives pleasure from using her abilities. His rhetorical questions—“Is that why she’s so afraid of it? Because she likes it?”—go unanswered because he cannot bear to face their implications. He senses her oncoming of adolescence and growth of power.

“That night he thought about the girl who could supposedly light fires. He thought about her a great deal. He wondered where she was, what she was thinking, what she was dreaming. He felt very tender about her, very protective.”

Rainbird is developing feelings for Charlie. Initially, his thoughts seem to have a paternal, protective nature. King later reveals the depth of Rainbird’s feelings, turning Rainbird’s paternalism into a revulsive form of intimacy.

“The last thing he saw in the rearview mirror as he drove down the reentry lane was the blind man sitting on the pavement, his face twisted in anger and terror…and the young woman placidly raising baby Michael to her shoulder to burp him.”

This surreal image balances horror and maternal comfort. It is an example of how King uses contrasts to amplify unease and unreality.

“‘It’s gonna be all right,’ he told her, and rocked her, not really believing it, but it was the litany, it was the Psalter, the voice of the adult calling down the black well of years into the miserable pit of terrorized childhood; it was what you said when things went wrong; it was the nightlight that could not banish the monster from the closet but perhaps only keep it at bay for a little while; it was the voice without power that must speak nevertheless.”

King uses free indirect discourse to reveal Andy’s mind. The single sentence, made up of several clauses, suggests the breathlessness and urgency of Andy’s mental state.

“Even after he had seen his wife crammed into the ironing closet in the laundry with that rag in her mouth, he had continued to lie to himself and tell himself that sooner or later they would be left alone.”

Vicky is mostly absent in the narrative. Her death simply serves the purpose of motivating the male protagonist. Vicky falls under the trope of “Women in Refrigerators,” a term coined by American writer Gail Simone, who compiled a list of superheroines and women in comics “who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator” to illustrate the prevalence of the phenomenon (Seale, Jack. “From Bond to ITV’s Strangers: Why Is Everyone ‘Fridging’?” The Guardian, Sep. 21, 2018). It is a critique of male-centered narratives that make use of murdered and maligned women, particularly wives and girlfriends, as a plot device that propels male characters forward.

“In a way, Charlie was a freak, not much different from the thalidomide babies of the sixties or those girl children of mothers who had taken DES.”

King mentions real-life unregulated drug trials that caused catastrophic consequences in the children born to test subjects. These build King’s theme of Government Overreach and the Failure of Authority and work to ground King’s narrative in a firmer reality.

“The major factor that had allowed him to stay in control was the speed with which they had located the McGees again. Cap was glad to take credit for that since it helped to prop up his position, but all it had really taken was computer time.”

King composed Firestarter during the nascent days of early computers. He attributes more ability and power to computers than they realistically would have held at the time. “Computer time” is not further defined; the computer’s reach is treated as a handy magic that gives the characters the answers they need. The text creates a foreboding atmosphere around technology, which is heightened by depicting it in Cap’s malevolent hands.

“You see her as you see me, Cap. It is your great failing. You look, you see a monster. Only in the girl’s case, you see a useful monster. Perhaps it is because you are a white man. White men see monsters everywhere.”

Through Rainbird, King critiques the white patriarchy. Rainbird suggests that Cap sees people who are others as threats. Rainbird briefly becomes the voice of reason, calling into question the Shop’s motivations and approaches.

“There was something terrible and otherworldly about that sound as it vibrated between the silent evergreen walls of this low and eroded bowl of hills.”

King creates horror with the foreboding landscape. In this way he evokes a trope of Gothic horror and writers like Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft.

“Except for the sensation of the chair beneath his butt and under his hands, he could have been floating in some lightless Lovecraftian gulf between the stars.”

King depicts Andy’s disorientation. He oscillates between the tactile nature of physical sensation and the ethereality of a “Lovecraftian gulf,” suggesting the depths of space where Lovecraft’s gods slumbered. Once again, King acknowledges a former writer of horror.

“But in a way, her mind told her with perfect certitude, it was fair. She was a murderer. She had broken the worst of the Ten Commandments and was surely damned to hell.”

Again, King uses free indirect discourse. Here, he focuses on Charlie’s sense of shame over her ability. He introduces Christian concepts, which have not been raised in the novel previously.

“In not-too-distant Washington, D.C., another year of legislation, rumor, and innuendo was beginning, marked with the usual freak-show atmosphere engendered by national television, planned information leaks, and overmastering clouds of bourbon fumes.”

King offers a cynical vision of politics, underscoring the novel’s vision of the American government and its processes. King presents a governing body that doesn’t work but rather has long been failing.

“‘The Nazis were also horrible,’ Rainbird said. ‘The Japs were horrible. Now the Germans and the Japanese are nice and the Russians are horrible. The Muslims are horrible. Who knows who may become horrible in the future?’”

Rainbird suggests that being a monster or “horrible” is subject to interpretation. He argues that the government decides who its enemy is and then demonizes them, calling into question supposed truths about any deemed monstrous.

“The sun was ahead, and she would ride Necromancer all the way to the sea.”

Charlie’s dream-vision provides an image for her coming-of-age. She visualizes herself as powerful, free, and self-actualized.

“There was Charlie, looking pretty as a picture in her blue jumper. With a lover’s eye, Rainbird noted that she had not braided her hair today.”

King portrays Rainbird’s sexual view of Charlie. In the first sentence, “pretty as a picture” recalls the warm, paternal eye of an adult looking over a child. Yet in the next sentence, King claims Rainbird is looking at her “[w]ith a lover’s eye.”

“‘Make it’—he coughed up thick blood and forced the words out—‘make it so they can never do anything like this again. Burn it down, Charlie. Burn it all down.’”

Andy, in his last moments, makes his final paternal act. At the beginning of the novel, Andy wanted Charlie to keep her abilities in check and under control. Here, he gives her a directive to unleash them. As a result, Charlie moves past the psychological barriers he has instilled.

“Men were reloading with strange, blank expressions on their faces. Many of them, like Rainbird, were veterans of the Vietnam war, and their faces wore the dull, twisted-rag expressions of men reliving an old nightmare at lunatic intensity.”

King describes the slaughter of the horses. He evokes the Vietnam War, a conflict that would have been fresh in the minds of readers. The veterans further exemplify the casualties of governmental weaponization.

“She did not want to kill people. That had not changed. What had changed was that she’d kill them if she had to. If they stood in her way.”

These sentences speak to Charlie’s awakening and show how she has changed over the course of the novel. Initially, she would not kill people. Now she is willing to. She has again been weaponized—not by the Shop but by her father.

“The potential had hardly been tapped.”

This quote conveys Charlie’s transformation. King laces it with double meaning. The word “potential” would have positive connotations if applied to other teenagers. In Charlie’s case, it speaks of her potential for death and destruction.