Desperation By Stepen King
Desperation, a recent Stephen King novel, is not just a book, but an experience that leaves the reader frightened, paranoid, and questioning his moral beliefs. Picture, if you will, a lone, crazed Nevada policeman who pulls over vehicles on a lonely desert highway and forcefully takes away their occupants. Whichever of them he doesn't kill immediately, he locks up in the jail of the small desolate town of Desperation. Among those captured are the vacationing Carver family, whose car is sabotaged on its way to Arizona. Already incarcerated is Tom Billingsley, a once well-known member of the now slaughtered community of Desperation. They are soon joined by formerly famous, currently old and overweight writer, Johnny Marinville, who is riding across the country on his Harley-Davidson gathering material for a book of short stories. How to escape Desperation isn't the only unanswered question, though. How could and why would one man single-handedly murder the population of an entire town? How does he have such control over the minds of the animals? Why are they locked up when he could have killed them
like every one else? Whatever it is that possesses the body of officer Collie Entraigan can't last forever, though. After several days his body is falling apart at the seams, and he is bleeding from every orifice. Weirder yet, he is growing several inches a day and is bound to burst soon. Will he? Or are the occupants of the local Desperation jail just backup bodies that the possessor will use when it wears out its current one? If so then what is it? More importantly, who's next? The book itself begins with a distressed Mary Jackson shouting "Oh! Oh, Jesus! Gross!" (p. 1) in revulsion upon seeing a dead cat nailed to a speed limit sign along the Nevada stretch of highway 50. This particular stretch of asphalt boasts the title "The Loneliest Highway in America," and to New York born and raised Peter and Mary Jackson, it is beginning to get a little too creepy. Soon Peter notices an upcoming car in the rear-view mirror. "Big chrome grille, coming up fast and reflecting such a savage oblong of sun that he had to squint . . . but he thought the car was white, which meant it wasn't State Police." (p.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Collie Entraigan, Peter Mary, Soon Peter, Stephen King, Johnny Marinville, Jesus Gross, Happy Wanderers, Tom Billingsley, Mary Jackson, America York, carver family, mary jackson, leaves reader, flat tires, soon peter, peter mary,
Approximate Word count = 743
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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