Stephen King 
     Stephen King is a very well known contemporary author.  His
works have constantly topped the best seller lists.  His novels
have been made into successful motion picture and television
productions.  This paper will take a look at some of Stephen King's
works.  First it will be shown how his life has affected his works. 
Then the paper will cover how history has impacted his work. 
Lastly an in depth review of one of his more popular works, The
Gunslinger will be present.
     As King puts it, "I grew up in a real rural environment, and
I've been writing about it ever since." [SKS, pg 21]  Even today
King is living in Bangor, Maine which is another rural environment. 
His rural background has provided a backdrop for many of his
novels.  The most noticeable of these is `Salem's Lot which King
based the setting on his own home town of Bangor.
     King also pulls ideas for his works from his life experiences. 
For example in his book The Shining there are billboards carved out
of hedges.  He got the idea from billboards in Vermont.  "They're
on Route 2 in Vermont... The words of the add have been clipped out
of hedges." [CoT, pg 132]  King himself sums it up the best. "You
write about places you know." [CoT, pg 137]
     In addition to getting ideas for his novels from his
environment he gets them from his own life experiences and the
experiences of his family.  For example when King was young he fell
down during an ice hockey game and split his head open on the ice.
[CoT, pg 90]  In his book The Dead Zone Johnny Smith falls down ice
skating and cracks his head open. [CoT, pg 90]
     King got the idea for Pet Semetary when his daughter's cat was
run over by a car and then buried in the local "Pet Semetary." 
King says he got the idea crossing the street to his car after the
cat was buried, "On one side of the road, I wondered what would
happen if that cat came back to life.  By the time I got to the
other side, I wondered what would happen if a human came back to
life." [SKS, pg 84]
     King tries to make his novels seem as life like as possible so
that it will be easier to lull the reader into a sense of normalcy
before scaring them.  One way that he does this is by using his own
fear of rats. [Mine] "... and I thought, what if someone said, `I
need a pillow,' and the stewardess opened the overhead rack and all
these rats came out into her face, and she started to scream, and
the rats were biting off her nose." [CoT, pg 1]  In this passage
King shows that he has thought about the idea of rats.  In one of
his first books, `Salem's Lot a scene involving rats coming out of
a dead person's mouth was edited because the publishers considered
it too grotesque. [CoT, pg 150]
     King has a fascination with fire.  He calls it the "werewolf"
inside of him. [CoT pg 30]  One of the epic scenes in The Stand
involves a character named Trashcan Man blowing up many things
explained in vivid detail.
     One reason King writes horror his because he sees it as a
"kind of psychological protection."  Also King says, "It's [writing
horror] like drawing a magic circle around me and my family.  My
mother used to say, `If you think the worst it can't come true.'
... If you write a novel where the bogeyman gets someone else's
children, then maybe they'll never get your own children." [CoT, pg
3]  If this is true then King does a great job of protecting his
children by using Jake, Roland's only companion in The Gunslinger. 
When Roland first meets Jake he learns by hypnotizing him that he
was run over by a car in New York City. [MoM, pg 61]
     In addition to King's lifestyle and personal experiences,
history has effected his writing style and story ideas.  King is a
member of "The first generation to grow up completely in the shadow
of the atomic bomb." [CoT, pg 183]  This shows up prominently in
two of his works.  The Gunslinger and The Stand are both "set in a
postapocalypse wasteland [AoD, pg 66] much like what the world
might look like after a nuclear war. [Mine]
     Modern events help to provide the backdrop for The Stand. 
King says, "... The actual impetus to write The Stand came from a
chemical-biological spill in Utah." [CoT, pg 23]  In The Stand a
mutated flu like virus accidently gets released from a military
laboratory and kills off most of the worlds population.
     King grew up in the seventies and was tempted to use it as a
setting for his book The Dead Zone.  As he puts it, "I wanted to
talk about the seventies with The Dead Zone.  I didn't want to hit
anyone over the head with it." [CoT, pg 94]
     Stephen King's works have been reviewed by many critics.  Some
critics have valid views while others seem to endlessly ramble on
about the story while not making much sense at all.  The Gunslinger
has been reviewed by many critics, some with good ideas and others
with some not so great ones.
     James Van Hise refers to The Slow Mutants as being, "drawn
out, aimless, and has Roland doing inexplicable things because we
know so little about his motivation.  King is still not letting us
in on what is really going on; everything seems murky and
senseless." [MoM, pg 61]  First off so far everything that Roland
has done in this book as had a purpose.  He is chasing the Man in
Black because the Man in Black is the first step in getting to the
Dark Tower. [Mine]  Roland also decides to bring Jake along because
Jake serves the purpose of helping Roland to find the Man in Black. 
Secondly it does not fit Roland's personality to do "senseless"
things.  Roland was trained and brought up in an environment where
order and sensibility were stressed.  Roland is fighting for his
life against the slow mutants and the last thing that he would be
doing is acting insensible.
     Van Hise observes that, "There is a strong implication that
the boy, Jake, is another trap left by the sorcerer." [MoM, pg 61] 
This is a good observation because up to this point the only humans
that Roland has encountered up to his point tried to kill him.  In
the town of Tull the Man in Black brainwashed the entire town into
believing that Roland was evil.  When he arrived in town the entire
populous of the town tried to kill him but Roland ended up shooting
them all dead to save his own life.  After an encounter like that
it is easy to see how one could believe Jake is yet another trap
left by the Man in Black.
     Douglas Winter calls Roland's character a knight errant like
person who can establish a new order because of his skill with his
guns. [AoD. pg 60]  It may be true that somewhere down the road
Roland might be powerful enough to accomplish a task such as
establishing a new order but he does not have the power at this
moment.  The order of the Gunslingers may have once been powerful
but that was long ago, Roland is the last gunslinger.  Roland is
too preoccupied with survival and reaching the Dark Tower to worry
about establishing a new order.  Whenever King gives the reader
insight to Roland's thoughts the idea of a new order never once
appears.  All that Roland seems to think about is his quest for the
tower.
     Winter compares Roland's sacrifice of Jake to "the way his
[Roland's] own youth was sacrificed to become a gunslinger." [AoD,
pg 66]  This is a good observation because it points out something
the reader might not have noticed.  With the sacrifice of Jake,
King shows two things about Roland's character.  One is that he
will have to make many great sacrifices in order to complete his
quest, and more importantly he is not going to let anything get in
the way of his goals.
     Tony Magistrale notices that, "Roland has a capacity for
violence that aligns him with the genre of the western and it's
reliance upon a heroic code of male aggressiveness." [SK 2nd, pg
143]  He could not have called that one any better.  Roland is
shown to be a violently aggressive character through out the book. 
The first instance is in the town of Tull when Roland guns down
every single resident of the town rather than run away from them. 
The second major example is when Roland and Jake are chasing the
Man in Black through a railway tunnel and they are besieged by the
slow mutants.  Roland reflexively pulls his guns and starts
blasting away at the mutants without a second thought.  The last
example of Rolands aggressiveness comes when Roland catches up to
the Man in Black and the Man in Black tells Roland to put his guns
away because he cannot be hurt by them.  Roland quickly pulls his
guns and starts shooting at him to no avail.
     Magistrale comments on civilization's passage by using
examples of, "The remains of gasoline pumps, highways, and railway
lines attest not only to civilizations passage but also the
dwindling of mechanical power in the face of magic, the later
raising as technology wanes."  [SK 2nd, pg 192]  There is no
visible evidence that magic has started to replace technology. 
People are using stagecoaches to get around.  If magic was starting
to replace technology one could logically expect for magic carpets
are the like to be modes of transportation.  There is not one,
single, example of magic growing to take the place of technology.
     Stephen King uses a frightening blend of real life experience
and historical events to make his books seem like a realistic place
that his readers can lose themselves in.  A reader will not quickly
forget a masterfully spun tale of a lone man, trekking across a
vast, postapcolypic wasteland in search of an object more powerful
than any human mind can completely comprehend.  As long as King
continues writing such excellent novels he will be endeared to the
hearts of many for generations to come.