The Body By Stephen King Analysis

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1.) Introduction

Renowned American author Stephen King is famous for taking the horror genre out of its typical Gothic environment, and bringing it to our everyday life, proving that about anything can be a source of terror. By exploring the dark side of human society and breaching moral codes and taboos King manages to create the distinct feeling of uneasiness and revulsion which is a characteristic feature of his works.
Although King himself generally does not mind being pigeon-holed (503) his collection of novellas Different Season (1982) constitutes a rather atypical work of his, in so far as the novellas are no horror stories to begin with. Being too short to be published separately, yet too long to fit into one of the short story anthologies, they were published together, united under the seasonal image. Each of the novellas represents one season, which is conveyed by the plot as well as the subtitle.
When one of the novellas, The Body, was adapted as a movie under the title Stand by Me (1986), many spectators were not aware of the fact that the movie was based on a story by Stephen King. Although, according to the author himself, it does not completely lack elements of horror (503), The Body, subtitled as the Fall from Innocence, is essentially a coming of age narrative, or story of initiation, i.e. “the introduction of a young person into any society by instruction in its principles, rules and mysteries” (Staeck, 6). The protagonists are four twelve year old boys