A while back I posted "Stephen King will mess with your head." Reading Christine is no exception.
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The novel revolves very much around high school life. This is true of a lot of Stephen King's early work. Of course, King taught school for a while, so he experienced school at two levels. Most of us finished high school and didn't look back. On to college and then the "real" world. King writes as a man who's memories of high school are fresh.
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I dreamed last night about high school. Nothing truly terrible, just one of those tense dreams where I knew I was supposed to be somewhere but couldn't remember where my class was. But it's that memory of forced submission. It's like prison, a place paid for by the State teens are forced by law to attend. Worse, the other inmates! Actually, I had a great high school experience, but it was still filled with its own share of uneasiness.
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What made us uneasy in high school? Not just the jocks and the jerks -- the Carrie's and the Arnie's were part of the mess. Those of us who were pretty much "none of the above" were put in the awkward spot of being caught in the middle. Watching the harassment -- unsure if we should defend the Carrie's and Arnie's or ignore the torture they were enduring. These kinds of tensions were completely gone by college. There's not many people getting tortured in college (that I know of). Of course, there's still hazing, but somehow it's all on a different level.
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I have degrees on my office wall -- insurance that I will not have to go back to school. And high school is far behind me. Almost forgotten -- if not for the kindnesses of Stephen King. As we are taken into Arnie and Dennis' world, we are returned to the old state run prison of high school.
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Stephen King will mess with you head: http://talkstephenking.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-stephen-king-will-mess-with-your.html
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