Pages: 505
This is going to be a weird book review because it’s not A BOOK. It’s a bunch of Stephen Kings’ short stories’ all in one book. I’m not going to do a full out review on every story or the whole book, I’m going to give you the synopsis of every story and the point it was trying to make, and how I liked it.
The Mist:
The mist is about a city in Maine that got hit with this terrible storm. And the morning after the storm there was this thick white fog that covered everything. But it wasn’t just fog, there were things hiding in the fog. This is a story about a group of people that were in the super market when they got stuck in this death trap. It was very interesting and it held me through the entire thing. The only thing that I don’t like about it is that it had an ambiguous ending. I hate all ambiguous endings because I like to know what actually happens because then I’m not sitting there trying to figure out if one thing or another ended the story. But overall it was very interesting.
Here There Be Tygers:
Yes for the record, that is how he spells the title. Tygers with a “y” not an “I.” This short story confused me quite a lot actually. It was only about 6 pages, but I had to go back and read it three times before it actually clicked. This story is about a little boy in kindergarten who really needs to go to the bathroom (or basement as he calls it) and he is too scared to ask his teacher, and when he does he enters the bathroom and finds a tiger lying on the floor. A friend of his come in and tries to get him to come back to class, but the little boy has still not yet gone to the bathroom because of his fear of the tiger. The boys’ friend goes around the corner and unfortunately gets eaten by the tiger, and then the teacher comes in and sees the boy still too frightened to go to the bathroom, and the teacher in turn, gets eaten by the tiger also. Soon after, the boy returns to class as if nothing happened. The theory that I came up with is that Stephen King wrote this short story to show just how overactive a young child’s mind is. The tiger represents the deeper part of our minds that truly hates other people and wants them to be destroyed. The boy created the tiger (metaphorically or not is still a good question) from his mind to unleash his anger on the people he disliked. It also leaves it open to whether or not the reader believes that the tiger is real or not. And this brings me also back to my statement of, I HATE ambiguity.
The Monkey:
This was a super creepy story. It was about this boys’ childhood plaything, a monkey with cymbals that was evil. It seemed broken, but really it wasn’t. It wouldn’t clap the cymbals together when you wound it up, but on its own, and when it clapped the cymbals you knew that somebody was going to die. In the end he got rid of the monkey with his son. This story actually creped me out a lot. I mean there wasn’t much killing in it but the way it was told…..*shudder*
Cain Rose Up:
This story actually took me about three times to read it because I didn’t understand it the first time. It deals with a depressed and homicidal college student, Curt Garrish, who goes on a murderous sniper rampage from his dorm room. It is the end of the school year. Curt talks frequently about how people should either do the best they can with their life or die. And it’s interesting how King worded this story, because you didn’t know what he was going to do until it happened because Curt didn’t show any emotions to wanting to do that. But it was quite good.
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