Stephen King Research Paper

Stephen Edwin King, a horror author, earned his fame due to his experiences skillfully crafting his books, making him a person whom all authors envy and admire. Starting with King’s young life, he constantly moved and his father abandoned them, shaping his career. These experiences as a child are the frame of his many of his books, such as his most famous book, Carrie, which is about a high school girl who realizes she is different and is repressed by family and society. This book became a hit when it came out, and he was announced to have created one the best horror books ever written. A mixture of supernatural flowing with the truth in his works entices readers from the start. Known as the father of horror, King has earned that position as

King, as a child, had many experiences that created and shaped his future as a writer. King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine, United States of America (Baughman). His full name is Stephen Edwin King, but also used the pseudonyms Richard Bachman and John Swithen (“Stephen King” 1998). Many of King’s interests as a child consisted of reading, solving jigsaw puzzles, playing the guitar, watching movies, and bowling (“Stephen King” 2014). His father, Donald Edwin King, was a merchant mariner who divorced his mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King, a caregiver at a mental institute, leaving the family to fend for themselves when King was just a toddler (“Stephen King” 1998). His older brother, David, and he himself were solely raised by their mother and her morals throughout their lives as they never had a father figure. In the first seven to eight years after the divorce, the family of three moved to many places, such as Fort Wayne, Indiana, Stratford, and Connecticut, and when King turned eleven, they finally moved back to Maine to stay (Mote). King finished his education, graduating from Lisbon Falls High School in 1966 and the University of Maine in 1970 with a teaching credential and a Bachelor of Arts in

King has become, “in words echoed by more than one commentator,” the unchallenged king of horror (“Stephen King” 2013). King constantly proves himself to be the premier “barometer of cultural order” (“Stephen King” 2014). King is the sole heir to the American gothic tradition in that he has placed his horrors in contemporary settings with the horrors and struggles of American society (“Stephen King” 2014). Walter Kendrick in the Village Voice begrudges the unmistakable genius in King, saying that he writes with such “fierce conviction, such blind and brutal power, that no matter how hard you fight, King is irresistible,” himself being an example (Baughman). Charles de Lint, a writer in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction commented on King’s writing that his quality of being able to pour himself in his books outshines him (“Stephen King” 2014). From the Fear Itself contributor, “King’s ability to comprehend “the attraction of fantastic horror to the denizen of the late twentieth century, partially accounts for his unrivaled” popularity in the genre which he creates (“Stephen King” 2014). A Publishers Weekly columnist wrote that if the publishing