Enduring Understanding
Alex Payne
Mrs Oberdieck
Honors Lit
Jan/10/2025
What would you do if you were imprisoned and didn't know what was to come next? Through Steven Kings books he hopes to convey to us that humanity is doomed through horrors in our sinful world like being abused for our powers or our humanly abilities. He also directs us through the story to see how Charlie and Luke despite being in different books are both treated not as humans. In Steven King's thrillers Firestarter and The Institute he illustrates masterfully through his words and imagery the importance of setting, and how it establishes many of the characters in these novels. Which they have to make critical decisions due to their captitvity that will help them be free from their abuse of their powers.
In The Institute setting plays an important role in the emotions of the main character Luke and how he seeks to learn more about what the Institution really is. While being brought to the Institution as he looks around to see trees in which he can recognize as "America" yet it is tantalizing for him as he cannot go out there. he is at first shaken and another kid notices this and says, "this isn't America its the kingdom of the Institute" (King 90). While Luke has a thrist to see the outside forests and go back home the same kid hopes to help him by sharing what the Institute really is and how even the rooms here look like the "rooms at home." They said to Luke "we have rooms that look like our rooms at home which is probably suppose to provide some kind of, I don't know, soothing for our tender emotions" (King 96).
In the Firestarter Stephen King bases a lot of the environment in the novel around forests especially around the shop where Charlie and Andy are held captive. With the novel centering in Washington D.C and relating the forest around "the shop," or where Charlie is held (King 124). With Charlie feeling dread and fear while in the shop with saying to Andy, "They're not just watching us they are dismantiling us" (181 King). With her being abused and not seen as a human she is eager to escape that wretched place which she is able to soon do. She is so relieved to see the forests surrounding her to give up the fear of abuse she says to herself, "for the first time in weeks I felt like I could breath" (King 397).
In these novels Stephen King likes to portray the major forests areas with them wanting to seem familiar to the character as it is to him, and it helps to make you "see the little connections" in his works with Truitt saying in his article, "when you see the little connections its interesting and fascinating but when you think about the geography, you start to feel like he's created incredible tapestry" (Truitt 7). Truitt also makes relations to his "small slightly rundown Maine locale" by putting it in relations to Kings books and how he took ideas from his own town and put it in novels. He shows these relations by saying, "castle rock could be any small, slightly rundown Maine locale, that is until the intimating towers of Shawshank penitentiary emerge it then becomes readily apparent your in Stephen King country now" (Truitt 1).
In Steven King's thrillers The Institute and Firstarter he illustrates the importance of setting and how it established feelings of many of the characters due to their captivity which leads them to make crucial decisions to help them be free of abusive powers.
Works cited-
King, Stephen. Firestarter, New York, viking press, 1980.
King, Stephen. The Institute, New York,Simon and Schuster, 2019.