In my last post I questioned whether or not I could consider finishing one book (after finally finishing The Stand) being “on a roll” or not. My conclusion was, probably not. However, I have now finished a second book. And while I’m hesitant to yet consider this “a roll”, I think I’m well on my way. However, any momentum I have gained is going to be quickly stopped thanks to the movie version of The Dead Zone being listed as “Very Long Wait” on Blockbuster Online. Unless someone reading this has a copy they’d like to let me borrow, I’m not sure when I’ll get to move on to the next book.
But enough about that, let’s get to the part we are all here for, my thoughts about The Dead Zone.
I am going to handle this post a little differently. In the past, I have always had a bunch of thoughts about what I was going to say, but when it came time to actually write my post, they never seemed to fit into the flow very well, so I left them out. This time however, rather than try to make everything “flow nicely” I’m just going to say what I want to say and see how it turns out. It may seem a little more sporadic than the previous posts have, but I should be able to get in everything I want to say this way. When I’m done, we’ll see just how successful this ends up being.
Before I get too far, I should probably give a brief overview of what The Dead Zone is about for those who don’t already know. Also, due to the nature of how I will be handling this post, it is quite likely I might give away more than I usually do, so just be warned that it is quite possible that spoilers will come up. The basic premise of the book is that it follows a young man named John Smith (or Johnny as he is mostly called by his friends and relatives). Johnny is involved in a car accident and goes into a coma. He wakes up almost 5 years later and discovers he has the ability to see glimpses into people’s lives when he touches them, or objects belonging to them. He can’t control what he sees, and he doesn’t always see something. Sometimes he sees the future, sometimes the past. The majority of the book then looks at how he must deal with coping with the struggles of coming out of a coma combined with his new psychic abilities. That’s pretty much all you need to know about the plot for now, though I will be revealing more as the post continues.
One of the biggest things that Johnny deals with regarding his new “powers”, and of the thing I found myself contemplating about the most, is the idea of using his power to help others. Upon his learning that he has these powers, he tries to keep it a secret as much as possible, as he doesn’t want to be flooded by the public pressuring him; after all, he does have the stress of waking up from a 5 year coma to deal with. However, when he gets a flash from his physical therapist that her house is going to burn down, he cannot help but take some action. As a result, the information that the young man who woke up from the 5 year coma is now a psychic leaks out and Johnny is consequently flooded with letters from people asking for help. Most of these letters he completely ignores. Some of them he reads, but he never responds to any of them.
This issue of how to “use the power” is one that I struggled with in my own mind. It seems that one would almost have to take Johnny’s approach of helping no one. As once you started helping anyone, there would be backlash from people you didn’t help. But then the question comes up, if you actually had the power to see into people lives and possibly help them, should you feel obligated to do so? My natural instinct is to say “no”. I don’t feel that I should be obligated to do anything for anyone if I didn’t want to. On the other hand, what about human decency? If I have the ability to help someone one but choose not to, what does that say? It’s not really an easy question to discuss since it lies outside the realm of possibility. It’s like asking if someone had the powers of Superman, should they feel obligated to help humanity? It’s really an irrelevant question because without actually having someone in that position in reality to base it off of, it’s almost impossible to imagine, let along discuss in any “real” sense. But that doesn’t make it any less fun to do 🙂 So, suppose you had psychic abilities. Would you feel any obligation to help those you could? And if you choose to do so, how do you handle the ramifications of not being able to help “everyone” who will want you to? I say imagine it for you because I think it puts a completely different spin on it to say what “someone else” should do versus what “I” should do. I honestly don’t know where I stand on this one. I think I would feel like I would want to help people, but at the same time, I wouldn’t necessarily feel obligated to any one person. I also don’t know how I would go about deciding who I did and didn’t help.
Well, I think I could go back and forth on that issue of pages without ever really coming to any solid conclusion or even make any progress, so what do you say we drop that and move on?
In addition to letters, Johnny receives packages from people. They send him objects that belonged to loved ones asking him to touch them and tell him what happened to their owners. Perhaps a husband never returned from war and the wife wants to know if he is alive or dead. Or perhaps a parent wants to know what happened to a child that disappeared. Things like that. Johnny, just like with the letters, never responds to the requests, he simply sends the objects back to the owners with no response whatsoever.
Many times Johnny wouldn’t even get any flashes at all with objects, so even if he wanted to help he couldn’t. However, one object does spark a flash, which we are allowed to see. And this flash actually provides what I consider to be one of the most spine chilling moments in the book. Johnny receives an object from a lady whose brother went missing while hiking in the woods and she would like to know what happened to him. When Johnny touches the item, he gets flash of what happened, from the brother’s point of view. He sees the young man hiking in the woods, then stepping off the trail to find a place to go to the bathroom. The young man unwittingly walks into a patch of quicksand, and proceeds to sink. To his death. What contributes to this scene being so unnerving is that fact that it is described from the point of view of the victim. Getting to almost experience with the young man his struggle as he tries to get out, slowly sinks deeper and deeper, calls for help to no avail, and sinks below the surface and begins to drown was, to be perfectly honest, completely and utterly terrifying to imagine. The scene itself was pretty short, and it wasn’t particularly graphic in anyway, but just putting myself in that man’s place an trying to imagine what it would be like to be completely helpless, knowing I am going to die and there is nothing I can do about it gave me the heebie jeebies. I used to think that falling out of an airplane without a parachute would be one of the most horribly antagonizing ways to die, knowing there is nothing you could do while you are plummeting. However, the quicksand death in The Dead Zone could certainly give that a run for its money. Of course, I don’t know much about quicksand, so I don’t know if it really works that way in real life, or just in movies and books. If that’s the case, then the airplane still wins. But if not….. Quicksand might almost be worse. (Edit: So I did some research. Sounds like the dangers of quicksand have been greatly “hollywoodized”. That is, while quicksand does exist, it would basically be impossible to “sink to your death” in it. Without getting too technical, the sand is basically denser than the human body. So if you did get stuck in it, and it was actually deep enough to cover you (most of the time it isn’t), you’d only sink about half way. Think of a cork bobbing in water. So, yeah, you can discount the quicksand fear. Though, there is another type of quicksand that could pose a sinking threat. It’s called dry quicksand, and it’s more similar in nature to the lightning sand in The Princess Bride, then to the wet bog one would think of as normal quicksand. Dry quicksand could theoretically cause someone to rapidly sink below the surface. Theoretically because, as far as any real scientific data is concerned, it’s never been found to actually exist naturally.)
Ok, so since we discussed the topic of Johnny’s obligation/non-obligation to use his powers, let’s throw one more philosophical question into the mix. After what I consider to be the mid book climax (I’ll talk more about this story arch later), Johnny takes up the hobby of attending political rallies so he can shake hands with politicians running for office and “see what he can see”. During one of these rallies, he shakes the hand of a newcomer to the political scene, Greg Stillson. Stillson is a first time candidate for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. While Johnny knows nothing about Stillson, we have been treated to a few glimpses of his life throughout the book, and let’s just say he’s not a man I would vote for, or a man anyone would vote for, for that matter. Anyone who was privy to the information the reader is privy to that is. The glimpse Johnny sees into Stillson’s future is not a pretty one. He doesn’t see very much and it’s not very clear, but he does see Stillson being sworn in as President several years down the road. He also gets a glimpse of what is only hinted at being described as “nuclear disaster”. Johnny’s takeaway from this experience is that, somehow Stillson cannot be allowed to continue his political career. The question that Johnny starts contemplating, and even posing to others to see their opinions is, “If time travel were possible, would you travel back in time and kill Hitler?”. One of the caveats being that you would most definitely get caught. I found the question interesting. Of course, much like the issue with dealing with the question of using psychic ability, since time travel is not possible, the discussion cannot really be had in a purely realistic sense. However, it certainly makes one’s head turn to think about it. Is killing one man justified when it will save countless other lives? And at what point? Would you be able to kill a 5 year old Hitler, knowing what he would grow up to do? Would that be justified? This issue was sort of addressed (though not quite to this scale) on an episode of Lost when Sayid shoots a young Ben, Jack refuses to help him, but Kate does everything she can to save his life, knowing full well what he will grow up to do. I think it is actually a much deeper question than one might think at first glance, and would require a lot of thought to really discuss it seriously. I’m not going to go into it too much, as I believe it could spark some major controversy and I don’t want to do that. So I’ll leave it alone.
Johnny takes the question very, very seriously. He thinks through all of his options and decides that he must dosomething to prevent the future he foresaw. He tries to consider many ways of exposing Stillson for who he is, but in the end determines that nothing can be as certain to work as just killing him. The only thing that worries Johnny about this is the ramifications. There is an incident earlier where Johnny believes a local bar is going to burn down after being struck by lightning. As a result, the group of kids that will be there celebrating their high school graduation will be killed. Johnny approaches one of the parents about the issue, and while he doesn’t believe Johnny, he agrees to do what he can to get people to go to a party at his house instead. Lightning does strike, the place does burn, and the kids that decided to attend the party at the bar die. The kids who chose to attend the alternative party are grateful to Johnny for saving their lives. Johnny however feels bad about the kids that didn’t believe him and died as a result. He thinks there are things he could have done to prevent the party from happening, including burning down the bar before, so no one would get hurt. It occurs to him, however, that in this case there would have been no proof that he was right in his prediction. The only reason anyone believed him was because his prediction came true, the bar burned down. He faces this same issue with Stillson. Yes, he knows that terrible things will happen if Stillson’s career is allowed to continue. But, unless those things happen, no one will fully believe what he says. If he takes action to prevent the horrible future he saw, many lives will be saved, but no one will know that. All anyone else will see is a crazy man, claiming to be a psychic, who assassinated a U.S. Representative. It is with this that Johnny struggles and must decide between the future he saw, or the consequences of the actions he is considering. I won’t say too much more about it, so that there is still some surprise if you choose to read the book yourself.
I want to revisit the fire for a minute, because there is something that happens in the aftermath that I want to discuss for a bit. After the fire, the mother of one of the young boys who was saved (and the wife of the man who helped Johnny plan the alternative party) goes into hysterics and starts yelling at Johnny, claiming that he caused the fire somehow, that he made it happen, he caused it in his mind “Just like in that book Carrie”. You’ll notice I put quotes around that last part. I did so because I’m quoting a line from the book. Yes, that’s right. One of the characters inThe Dead Zone references the existence of the novel Carrie. Not the events that took place in Carrie, but the actual book itself. I would just like to say that, while it may not seem like a big deal to you, when I start thinking about this for too long, it makes my head hurt. What are the ramifications of something like this? The fact that Carrie (the book) exists in “The Dead Zone universe” implies that so does Stephen King. Does this mean that it would be possible for Johnny Smith to interact with Stephen King? I’m not sure. I’m not sure if you can necessarily think of this as breaking the 4th wall either, as the characters themselves don’t recognize that they are in fact characters in a story. So I’m not sure what you would call it, however, thinking about it too hard does make my head swim…. I wonder if King himself even thought about what it would mean for him to reference one of his books, as being just a book, in another one of his books. Or if he just threw it in on a whim because he thought it would be cool.
This whole idea itself is one I sometimes think about. To what point do the things of the real world exist in a story which is supposed to take place “in the real world”. Again, this is something I’ve often thought about just for fun. To give you an idea of just where one could go with this line of thinking, let me use another example of this topic being touched upon (again, in a way that I don’t believe the writers considered the full ramifications of what they were doing, or even thought twice about it beyond the initial effect of “hey, this would be a cool idea”). In Ocean’s Twelve, there is a subtle joke hinted at that Tess (played by Julia Roberts) looks like a certain actress, but that it should never be brought up, because she doesn’t like that. However, and the end it become necessary to exploit this fact. And so, Tess Ocean pretends to be….. Julia Roberts. So, what are the ramifications of acknowledging the existence of the actor who is playing the character in that particular movie? Could the two conceivably come face to face? (At one point Tess is actually on the phone with “Julia”). What would that mean? To further compound things, Bruce Willis makes a cameo in the movie, playing himself. What does that do to things? If you acknowledge the existence of Bruce Willis, does that acknowledge all of the movies he has made as well? Could Ocean’s crew sit down and watchDie Hard while they are taking a break from planning their next heist? If so, could they also watch Twelve Monkeys? If they did, would they notice that Rusty just so happens to look a lot like Brad Pitt? As you can see, sometimes l let my brain go crazy on tangents…. And thus you can see why if I think about this too much I go a little loopy. But I think it’s a semi interesting question to ask, where does the line between fiction and fantasy get drawn when you are dealing with fiction that takes place “in the real world”.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that little tangent of mine. While we are on the topic of references to other King works, let’s look at just a few more that were included in The Dead Zone. Don’t worry though, none of them are quite as “mind bending” as the concept of one of the characters having read another of King’s books.
The first reference is subtle, and really doesn’t mean much at all. Near the beginning of the book one of the character’s lives on Flagg Street. You might remember that Randal Flagg was the antagonist from The Stand. I mentioned in that review that Flagg himself would show up later in some of King’s works (at least, I think I mentioned that… Yep, I checked, I did), but I didn’t realize just how quickly King would make references to him, if albeit subtle ones. Keep in mind that, since The Long Walk was a Bachman book, this is technically the first Stephen King book to come out after The Stand.
The next reference is not quite so subtle and in the context of continuity, it’s not really even a reference, but I’ll bring it up nonetheless. Some portions of The Dead Zone take place in the town of Castle Rock. This is not a real town in Maine, King made it up. However, there will be more books that occur in or near Castle Rock later on down the road. So, for someone reading King (specifically, reading The Dead Zone before reading other King stories written after it) for the first time, this would really have no meaning at all whatsoever at this point. But, for someone who is a King fan; it is nice to be able to mark The Dead Zone as the beginning of the “Castle Rock Universe”. I use this term because, from what I recall, all of the Castle Rock stories take place in the same “world”, meaning the events in one “book” would exist in the history of the characters in the next “book” (this will be apparent later on when I start reading/reviewing other books that take place in Castle Rock). For now, let me just say it this way, Cujo also takes place in Castle Rock, so you won’t find someone from Cujo picking up a copy of The Dead Zone at their local bookstore (as apparently characters in The Dead Zone were able to do with Carrie – I know, I know, let it go right…) but the characters in Cujo just might certainly talk about the events that happened in The Dead Zone.
Lastly, this book is where the origins of Frank Dodd are explained. That name won’t mean much to you right now, and I won’t say too much on it to minimize the spoilers. Let’s just say he is a part of the “big scene” that I was talking about earlier (and which I’ve now decided to mention in as much detail as I was thinking I would when I first mention it) that I consider to be the high point of the story. His name will come up again later in other books, so my mentioning him is again more just the recognition of fan saying “Oh, this is the book where he was first mentioned”.
Well, those are the main things that came up while I was reading as things I wanted to mention. I know that this turned into a longer post, but I enjoyed writing more because I was getting out everything I wanted to say. Though, it appears that, in all of what I had to say, I never actually shared any opinions on the book itself yet. Overall I would say that this book is “alright”. I definitely enjoyed reading it. Even for a second read through, when I remembered the main plot points, I still found myself captured by the story and enjoying it. However, the story isn’t all that “thrilling”. And, while the premise of the book seems like it would be something that could be exciting, it almost feels as if there is no pay off. Kind of like the book builds up these big possibilities and then doesn’t follow through. Perhaps this is because, in my opinion, the most exciting/engaging part happens around the middle, rather than at the end. Or at least, after the excitement in the middle, I guess I expected more out of what was supposed to be the climax. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the book by any means, because I did. I just wouldn’t rate it as an absolute “must-read” compared to some of the others I’ve read.
That’s all I have for now. Up next book wise is Firestarter, though I’m not sure when I’ll get to actually start it. As I mentioned before, the movie version of The Dead Zone is on very long wait at blockbuster and I’m not sure just how long I want to hold of waiting for it. On the one hand, I would like to keep things moving “in order” as much as I can. But, on the other hand, I was just starting to get back in the groove, so waiting too long to start up reading again could be detrimental. I guess I’ll just have to play it by ear.
Either way, I will be back eventually. I guess the surprise for you will be to see what I’m back with 🙂
As always, thanks for reading.
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