Reading Journal #0-About Stephen King

 Stephen King is one of the best horror story writers in the world, though I have never heard about him until I ordered 'Different Seasons', a reading material for the English class. To be honest, my first impression of Stephen King was not so good; I abhorred horror stories. The reason for the hatred was that I could not understand why people dare to pay their money for crazy stories to strain their nerves and to suffer from insomnia for days. However, I started to understand the value of the horror stories watching the documentary about Stephen King. Contrary to my stereotype, horror stories, especially of Stephen King, had some values as a branch of literature.
 The fist thing I found interesting is that the 'evils' in horror stories are not innate. They are all humans, who have emotions and thought. An actor in the documentary said that the characters are 'grounded' in the reality. Although some of King's characters, such as Carrie, are supernatural and seem unreal, it is probable that some innocent people can undergo such breakdown and cause tragedy like in King's stories. As he said in the documentary, horror stories are not only for entertainment but also for bewaring of possibility of violence.
Horror stories not only reveal the insight about human nature but also personal experiences of the author like any other kinds of literature do. The materials of his novel usually came out of his experiences. For example, Shining is related to the absent of his father when he was young. The name, Shining, seems happy and bright, but Shining is, ironically, such a gloomy story: a father, who has alcoholism, brutally murders his family. However, the author still viewed this tragic story shining because at least the family in the story has Father. I was very impressed by this answer because I could see King's sincere emotion from his face at that moment. If there was no personal reason for a particular subject, I must have misunderstood King that he intentionally made a character against humanity to cause horror and disgust. Nonetheless, his sincere answer gave me a chance to go inside the author's shoes and experience the different perspective.

To sum up, I realized that Stephen King's horror stories shares literary values with other genres, that I was more familiar with. Still, I don't want to stay up all night by watching his movies, but at least I respect Stephen King’s capability to achieve both entertainment and literary value.