Stephen King is more introspective in his new novel Doctor Sleep
In Stephen King’s new novel, doctor sleepKing brings back the character of Danny Torrence, the boy from the glow. In interviews, King says that when fans ask about the fate of specific characters (the ones actually living through the horror), he’s been more interested in those who question Danny’s fate. I think most people who have seen the movie remember the cute little boy on a trike with a bowl cut running through the empty halls of The Overlook Hotel. Later to run away from a crazy “white-knuckle alcoholic” who was his father.
doctor sleep It is, in my opinion, semi-autobiographical. As duma keywhich is about the aftermath of a man who has a terrible accident (as King), doctor sleep it deals with the reality of what it is like to be a recovering alcoholic. He didn’t know King was an alcoholic, but he has been in recovery for over twenty years. So he knows the depths one can dive to, as well as the difficulties of trying to stay sober. In doctor sleep, Danny is an alcoholic like his father and a chain smoker like his mother (who, in the novel, has died of lung cancer). When writing the book, King’s son Owen told him that the “push” he had given Danny, now Dan, was not far enough to match the plunge Dan’s father Jack had taken. King follows his advice. So if you don’t want big, he’s a quick read. Dan, after picking up a girl, fighting, spends his entire salary on cocaine, wakes up still drunk and has to go to the bathroom. “Another jolt of his unhappy gut… That released all the vomit triggers: the vinegary smell of hard-boiled eggs in a large glass jar, the taste of barbecue-flavored pork rinds, the sight of potatoes fries drowning in a nose-bleeding tomato sauce. All of that stuff stuffed into her mouth last night between takes. She was going to throw up…” And she does it spectacularly. But that leads to the main reason for the scene… Dan’s downfall. As she comes out of the bathroom, a little boy in a baggy diaper full of everything a baby throws out comes out of another room, sees the coke on the table, runs to it yelling, “Sneaky, mommy, sneaky!” Danny stops him from getting “slick” and the boy falls asleep with his drunk mother. Danny notices bruises on the boy’s body. As the mom passes out, he goes through her wallet and takes all the money from her. Justifying this by saying that she had been the one who made him spend his salary on coke. The money grab haunts Dan. And the boy’s bruises haunt Dan. This, to me, is the real crux of the novel. Dan can’t get past the demons of his past, his alcoholic father and murderer, the dead but undead people of The Overlook who visit him leaving behind pieces of their rotting and putrid bodies and the mother with her bruised baby. Dan discovers “that memories are the real ghosts” and that “you take them with you, wherever you go.”
Of course, in every King novel there has to be some kind of supernatural forces wreaking havoc. In this novel, King expands on the concept of “the shining”. It is the ability to read other people’s minds, move objects, or project outside of oneself. Dan has it and so does a young teenage girl named Abra. In doctor sleep, they have to fight a group of century-old serial killers, True Knot, disguised as RV-driving retirees who literally feed off the pain of others. They only feed on those with “the glow”, and they make their kills particularly brutal. Makes a better “steam”. They love 9/11 and other tragedies. The leader of this group, a woman named Rose, has a fang. In doctor sleepDan fights his past with far more fear and a sense of dread than the woman with the fang. Dan, through AA, “comes to know a new freedom and a new happiness.” He also realizes that he “will not regret the past or wish to close the door on it.” With this novel King, apparently, is not closing the door on his past.
