Compare and Contrast the styles Stephen King uses to bring terror to Essay

Compare and Contrast the styles Stephen King uses to bring terror to the reader in his books IT and MISERY - Essay Example This apart, he also shows mastery in turning ordinary animals around into beings that perpetuate blood-curdling terror in humans. The rabid bat and the dog in ‘Cujo’ are classic examples of this type. King also shows definite traits in creating horror through science fiction and possesses an uncanny ability to weave it into the fabric of everyday life, and to create suspense that leaves the readers begging for more. He also manages to blend into the tension felt by characters, into every day situations, like: when the hero or heroine goes into an attic the fear they feel becomes tangible to his readers. Such effectiveness is perhaps attributable to the talent he possesses in spinning a web of different elements of horror to trap his audience into its meshy threads. Literature which falls into the category of horror often explains the source of horror through supernatural events. Works of Stephen King are no exception to this. The writer also uses settings to evoke horror in the reader’s mind. For example, gurgling sounds issuing from the closet’s drainpipe and the monster springing out of it, in the novel ‘It’ is an excellent example of how king can employ settings to create horror. Similarly, writers present old houses, damp cellars, dungeons, forests and abandoned castles in horror fiction to evoke a sense of the primordial fear in the readers. Fictional horrors have a great effect on the minds of people because often readers are tempted to believe that the incidents portrayed can actually happen in their lives. Generally, the main theme of the horror literature is the struggle between good and evil forces which is true in the case of King also. However, a unique attribute of King’s writings is his skill, in explaining things rationally with the help of horror. A good number of horror novels deal with the thirst for knowledge and how it affects our society. Most of such novels fall into the category of science fiction.