On Reason Of Horror Of Stephen King's Thinner And Desperation

Emerging at the end of the 18th century, the Gothic fiction as a new literary style is featured by its mysterious, horrific and depressing atmosphere. After the 1820s, Gothic novels began to develop rapidly in America which had a profound impact on American literature. As one of the most popular and prolific writers in America today, Stephen King is the representative figure of new Gothic fiction and is known as "Modern master of horror fiction" by New York Times. Critics hold that what is probably more impressive than the number of books King has published or the amount of money he has earned is the Gothic tradition he has incorporated into his imitable art that is the very embodiment of a postmodernist aesthetic.King uses a lot of information from the western readers' unfamiliar world to cause an effect of terror. Isolated religion and races in eastern countries, strange culture, weird stories and horrible legends from eastern world are included. The curiosity and feeling of mystery of the readers are successfully used to feed terror. Actually, Eastern and Western culture have been contradicted for long. Through Said's Orientalism, we could find the unbalance between the East and the West is never broken and the humiliation and invasion to the East never stopped.The episteme to the Orient is hard to change while the distortion is also flourished no matter in academic papers or in literary works. This thesis aims to study King's two novels Thinner and Desperation based on the American culture and western way of life. By further analysis, it figures out that the reason of horror comes from the western readers' feeling of alienation and mystery to the eastern world. Chapter One is introduction. Chapter Two is about Gothic tradition and Orientalism. Chapter Three, Chapter Four and Chapter Five are the main body of the thesis. Chapter Three analyzes Stephen King's unique writing style and critical response to King's Gothic novels. Chapter Four focuses on facts about the two novels Thinner and Desperation and covers horror elements in the two novels. Chapter Five explores the root of terror namely under the vision of Orientalism. The oriental culture is still considered as marginalized and demonized. The terror of westerners not only comes from Gothic fictions but also from their alienation to the oriental culture. Stephen King is good at putting this kind of information and stories into his Gothic novels which is also a key factor for the popularity of his novels in the post-colonialism context.