You Like It Darker

“Nothing can give you what isn’t already there.”

This quote uses ambiguity to address the question of talent’s origins. The story suggests that Butch and Laird became famous after their encounter with aliens, but the aliens themselves indicate that the talent was in them all along. If the encounter was necessary to activate that talent, then that necessity negates the alien’s axiom in this passage. This adds tension to the resolution of the question the story seeks to address.

“I suppose the question has to do with talent—was it in us, or was it something given to us like a box of candy, because we saved Ylla’s life? Could we be proud of what we accomplished, kind of a lifting-up-by-the-bootstraps deal, or were we just a pair of poseurs, taking credit for what we never would have had if not for that night?

What the fuck is talent, anyway? […] Why would I be chosen when so many others try so hard and would give anything to be chosen? Why are there so few at the top of the pyramid? Talent is supposed to be the answer, but where does it come from and how does it grow? Why does it grow?

Well, I tell myself, we call it a gift and we call ourselves gifted, but gifts are never really earned, are they? Only given. Talent is grace made visible.”

Following through on the implications of the previous passage, this one highlights Laird’s doubts about the source of his talent. Despite the alien’s axiom, Laird can’t claim ownership over his success if his talent was given to him as a reward. Complicating this is his guilt over how talent and success are seemingly inequitable. These internal monologues convey the story’s thematic concerns.

“It’s all right to want what you can’t have. You learn to live with it.”

At the story’s end, Mark resigns himself to the knowledge that he’ll never live up to his father’s fame. However, rather than letting this knowledge destroy his sense of self-worth, Mark accepts his obscurity, lending complexity to the story’s larger message. Before he learned about the source of his father’s talent, Mark was convinced that fame and success were the end-all, be-all of life. In this passage, his perspective has shifted to accept that life offers more important things to pursue than fame and success.

“He still missed his wife—a victim of breast cancer five years previous—but aside from that persistent ache, his life was quite full. Before rising every morning, he reminded himself to enjoy the day. At sixty-eight he liked to think he had a fair amount of road left, but there was no denying it had begun to narrow.”

The opening paragraph of “The Fifth Step” introduces essential characterization about Harold Jamieson. His key trait is that he’s a man trying to make the most out of his later years, living to the fullest every day. This sets an expectation that the story will challenge his habits in some way, which Jack’s appearance fulfills.

“‘But there is an afterlife. Isn’t there, Grampa?’

James Jonas Fiedler ran that long yellow finger along the scant skin beneath his nose again, then showed his few remaining teeth in a smile. ‘You’d be surprised.’”

This passage in “Willie the Weirdo” depicts a subtle yet tender moment between Willie and his grandfather. Throughout the story, James answers Willie’s questions about history with fictitious anecdotes, indulging Willie’s curiosity about James’s age by making it seem like he lived through all of world history. When Willie asks James about the afterlife, James responds coyly, inviting Willie to indulge in the answer he believes in, regardless of whether James’s belief.

“Turn around, he thinks. You don’t want to go there and nobody’s making you, so just turn around and go home.

Except he can’t. His curiosity is too strong. Also, there’s the dog. If it’s there it will eventually disinter the body, visiting further violation on a girl or woman who has already suffered the ultimate violation of being murdered. Letting that happen would haunt him worse—and longer—than the dream itself.”

This passage represents a defining character moment in “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream.” Danny could easily avoid everything he later endures by letting his memory of the dream go. What defines Danny, however, is his unwillingness to let the girl suffer indignity in death, supposing the dream is true. He would rather give the dream the benefit of the doubt and do the right thing than avoid trouble. As a result, he doesn’t heed his inner voice and continues to the gas station.

“What the hell happened to innocent until proven guilty, Inspector Davis? I only found her. But we’ve already been around that mulberry bush and it has nothing to do with what I’m asking. Would you have done it the way Jalbert did, especially when he had absolutely nothing new to question me about?”

Danny’s primary alibi relies on one cornerstone of the American justice system: the idea that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Jalbert and Davis’s poor treatment of Danny highlights a central idea of the story: the justice system’s failure to live by its ideals.

“‘That little gold cross—is it just for show, or are you a believer?’

‘I go to Mass,’ she says warily.

‘So you can believe in God but not that I had a dream about where Wicker’s body was. Have I got that right?’”

This passage connects faith to the idea of being innocent until proven guilty. Danny appeals to Davis’s faith to argue for his innocence, calling out the fact that her faith has otherwise pushed her to uphold Jalbert’s sense of infallibility.

“He has no intention of staying. Someone threw a brick at his trailer. Someone put shit in his mailbox. Bill Dumfries basically told him, on behalf of the good people of Oak Grove, to get out of Dodge. What weighs against those things is Darla Jean sitting in the dirt next to her dollhouse with tears rolling down her cheeks. But he doesn’t think it weighs enough to tip the scales. He has a brother in Colorado, and if getting shot does nothing else, it gives you insight into how short the time is you have to spend with your loved ones.

‘All because of one dream,’ he says bitterly. ‘It didn’t even help catch the guy.’”

Irony highlights Reckoning With the World’s Cruelty as an overarching theme of the collection. Despite the moral correctness of reporting Yvonne’s location to the police, Danny has had his entire life uprooted, culminating in his shooting at the hands of Yvonne’s brother. Danny may not regret his decisions, but that doesn’t stop him from regretting that he was the one who had the dream.

“She told Finn that for every stroke of bad luck God dealt out, he gave two strokes of the good. […] ‘When things go wrong, just remind yourself “God owes me.” And God always pays His debts.’”

In “Finn,” the boy’s grandmother provides this maxim to reassure him that luck has two sides. However, the maxim also functions as a plot device, forcing the reader to expect it to be proven true or false by the story’s end. When Finn is freed from captivity, his release is ambiguously a stroke of good luck, which calls into question whether he could have ever experienced good luck if he hadn’t first experienced bad luck.

“That could be happening to me, Finn thought. They went too far with the waterboarding and I’m drowning. Only instead of my whole life flashing in front of my eyes, as it’s supposed to do, I’m imagining that Doc took me out, Pando drove us away, and here I am, in the park I enjoyed so much as a wee lad. Because really, is my escape likely? Is it realistic? You might believe it in a story, but in real life?

Was it real life, though? Was it?”

An allusion to the Ambrose Bierce story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” underscores the anticlimactic resolution of “Finn.” This passage introduces ambiguity into whether the scene in the park is happening or not. Nevertheless, it effectively frees Finn from the expectations that dictate his “real life,” including the belief that bad luck has power over him.

“The trouble with the old bastard, Corinne thinks, is that he still gets a kick out of life, and people who get a kick out of life take a long time kicking the bucket. They like that old bucket.”

“On Slide Inn Road” initially conveys the tension between the couple, Frank and Corinne Brown, and Frank’s father, Donald. The above passage encapsulates the source of this resentment. The Brown family dislike Donald because of how he seems to find joy in everything, including the irritating rural road he directs them to use as a “shortcut” during their trip. The conflict is later disrupted by a new conflict with the thieves Galen and Pete, which allows Donald to win Corinne’s support.

“Smoking in bed, like when they were first married and thought they’d have a couple of kids and live happily ever after. Twelve years later, there are no kids and Wilson is feeling mighty mortal.”

At its core, “Red Screen” is a story about the fear that aging can transform people into something unrecognizable. This passage juxtaposes the past and the present to emphasize this theme, contrasting the idealism of Wilson and Sandi’s early marriage to the bleakness and impending doom of their middle age.

“You can’t do the job unless you’re convinced each time the turbulence starts that you are going to die. You’re convinced of that even though you know you’re the one making sure that won’t happen.”

“The Turbulence Expert” builds dramatic irony into its central premise, as evident in this passage. Dixon’s fear is essential to preventing turbulence from bringing down planes and thus essential to saving the passengers on each flight. However, to ensure this outcome, Dixon must authentically give in to his fear on every single flight on which he works, forcing him to forget the assurance and security his job provides. He feels that the repeated experience of his fear outweighs the job’s benefits.

“A grieving person needs something to occupy his mind. Something to take care of. That was what I thought when I saw that sign. It’s not a case of who wants a dog, it’s a case of who needs a dog. That’s you.”

In “Laurie,” Beth’s rationale for giving Lloyd a dog that it provides a prescription to help him overcome grief. She correctly suggests that Lloyd devote his mind to caring for someone else lest the absence of his late wife, Marian, consume his thoughts. In addition, this passage subtly hints at Lloyd’s failure to take care of himself, as descriptions of the state of his home illustrate later in the story.

“Lloyd wondered if she was having a fantasy where she tore the alligator to pieces, and told himself he was being stupid. You didn’t make animals into something they were not. He hadn’t read that in So You Have a New Puppy! It was one of those things you found out on your own.”

In this passage, Lloyd has a poignant insight into his experiences with Laurie. Several paragraphs earlier, the dog sleeps on Lloyd’s bed for the first time, occupying the side that his wife once did. The following day, when he speculates about what Laurie must be thinking as she plays with her toys, he becomes conscious of how he’s projecting his perception onto her. Lloyd realizes that Laurie exists apart from his grief, unable to serve as a replacement for his wife. He cares for Laurie for her own sake, not as a salve for his grief.

“Then, looking straight at me, she said, ‘I know they aren’t there.’

I didn’t know how to respond. Allie didn’t seem to mind.

‘And yet sometimes they are.’

I remembered Donna once saying something similar. This was months after Tad died and not long before we divorced. Sometimes I see him, she said, and when I told her that was stupid—by then we had recovered enough to say unkind things to each other—she said, No. It’s necessary.”

This passage from “Rattlesnakes” represents a crucial turning point in the friendship between Vic and Allie. She has been ostracized by her community because of how she manifests her grief. What makes her relationship with Vic different is that he understands her well enough to indulge that manifestation, causing her to admit, possibly for the first time, that she’s aware it isn’t real. Her response that her boys are both there and not there inspires further empathy from Vic, causing him to remember a comment that his late wife made about their deceased son.

 “It wasn’t fair. True of the Bell twins, true of my son, true of my twice-married wife. The world is full of rattlesnakes. Sometimes you step on them and they don’t bite. Sometimes you step over them and they bite anyway.”

Though a sequel to Cujo, “Rattlesnakes” subverts the usual tropes of sequels by making the title animal not so much a villain but a metaphor for the theme of Bad Luck as Destiny. Vic reflects on the random way that rattlesnakes victimize innocent passersby, just as people experience bad luck without rhyme or reason, forcing people like Vic to believe that life is fundamentally unfair.

“More than the object itself, the shadow proved it. Shadows don’t exist unless there’s something to make them.”

This passage from “Rattlesnakes” could read as a statement for King’s philosophy of horror writing. Throughout the collection, characters uncover the world’s darker side by following the faint signs that darkness casts on them. “The Dreamers,” for instance, looks not at the creatures on the other side of the dream barrier but at their effects on those who behold them. Meanwhile, characters like Danny Coughlin and Harold Jamieson are afforded quick glimpses of evil without ever really knowing their perpetrators for who they are. Shadows terrify when the viewer can’t make sense of what is casting them.

“The dead could age. I had never considered the possibility, but knew it now.

But only if they wanted to. Allowed themselves to. It was apparently possible to both grow and not grow, a paradox that had produced the gruesome hybrids I’d seen in the guest room’s double bed: man-things with the bloated heads of poisoned children.”

One defining characteristic of King’s style is his sense of imagery. This passage creates memorable antagonists in the Bell twins by juxtaposing discordant visual elements: adult bodies with the bloated heads of poisoned children. This becomes a larger visual metaphor for the theme of Dealing With the Consequences of Death, showing how grief grows in those who harbor it for too long.

“Forgetting is what would be wrong. Holding on too tightly…I think that makes monsters.”

Vic arrives at the thesis of “Rattlesnakes” by antagonizing a particular approach to grief. It isn’t so much that remembering the dead endangers Vic and Allie. Rather, turning their grief into the engine that carries them through a half-empty life creates a hostile environment, as the Bell twins symbolize in the story. It shows Vic that he must let go of his grief over Tad’s death to move forward and stop visualizing “monsters.” The idea of “monsters” recalls a poem-like piece Vic wrote for Tad in Cujo called “The Monster Words” to help him overcome his fear of monsters.

“The Gentleman Scientist was fooling with something dangerous and knew it but either wasn’t willing to stop or couldn’t and in the end those things come to the same. I could stop which made me a fool to go on, but there was another factor. Something had happened to me. I had grown curious. It was welcome and dreadful in equal measure. It was a feeling and in my world those had been in short supply. […] [W]hen those feelings start to return you see the possibility that your humanity isn’t as gone as you thought it was.”

In “The Dreamers,” protagonist William Davis is characterized by his dulled sense of feeling. Elgin’s experiments elicit William’s curiosity, which drives him to continue participating in them despite knowing the risk it puts him in. William craves the return of his emotions so much that he’s willing to take those risks to feel like a person again.

“I shouldn’t be surprised at how unhelpful the questions of smart people can be, having been in this business for as long as I have, yet somehow I still am. It’s loose. It’s lazy. I have often wondered if smart people really understand what answers they seek in life. Perhaps they just cruise along on a magic carpet of ego, making assumptions that are often wrong. That’s the only reason I can think of as to why they ask such impotent questions.”

The title character of “The Answer Man” condescends to Phil by describing how terrible smart people are at asking questions. By discussing the concept of the “impotent question,” he effectively identifies Phil’s greatest character flaw: his indecisiveness. Phil wants to use his relationship with the Answer Man to figure out what to do with his life. He instead casts off the responsibility to make decisions, which doesn’t bode well when the Answer Man’s responses eventually point to a future that Phil doesn’t want.