Personal narratives
often facilitate emotional connections to the reader, particularly when they
speak of something as nostalgic as the blurred, hazy memories of our childhood.
In this article, Stephen King describes a situation he faced when he was around
7 or 8 years of age, too sick to attend school and finish the first grade. He
explains how he spent his days at home, while his brother moved on in school.
But his life did not stand as still as one might think; he read comics and got
lost in their narratives to the point of inspiration. King goes on to explain a
vital learning process in reading that I found myself identifying to very well:
where imitation takes a fundamental role in shaping the creation of writing. He
copied the core of stories and added his own touches to them and showed them to
his Mom, seeking approval and deeply enjoying the satisfaction of it. She did,
however, encourage him to write his own stories, which he consequently did with
four more. He received a quarter for each, and King describes this dollar he
earns as the first he made in his career of writing. A dollar, in substance,
seems so little. But when we consider the circumstances and what separate kind
of truer worth this dollar had, we see it as a tiny milestone in his journey of
being a renowned writer.
By reading this
article, I have formed my own theories as to why King not only became a
fantastic writer but also leaned to the paranormal and fantasy genres. Being
sick for any length of time induces boredom, a kind of mental discomfort in an
already depressive state. King's escape into comic books and narratives appear
to have been just the distraction he needed to get him through a difficult part
of his life; the idea of an ill body but a thriving, exercised imagination
depicts evidence of the human resilience and spirit.
I imagine people
caught in the net of their dreary repetitive lives, detached from the world in
a way similar to King as an ill child, hungry for an escape into narratives so
vivid and captivating that they transcend a reader's own reality. For them,
King's writing has the power to do just that.
Joey Ness
1000801652
Annotated Biblio
King, S.(2000). Writing The Literacy Narrative.
In S. Blau & K. Burak (Eds.), Writing In the Works (42-50). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage
Learning.
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