An overview of "Suffer the Little Children" by Stephen King.
For my midterm short story review, the two stories I chose to read were: 1. O. Henry's, The Ransom of Red Chief (because I was in the play version of the story in high school) and 2. Stephen King's, Suffer the Little Children (because I really like Stephen King). The one I chose to write about however was the second one.
The plot starts out with a third grade teacher named Miss Sidley. King in the first paragraph of the story aptly compares her to God, by explaining how she knows every detail of her class from those chewing gum, to those wanting to go to the restroom to trade baseball cards instead of use the facilities. King shows this absolute power in her mannerisms, her body language, and the looks that we, the reader, glimpse into her mind. She is described as "a small woman, who had to stretch to write on the highest level of the blackboard." Graying, and plagued with a failing back, which she wears a brace to support, this woman was still feared by all the children. The event that really gives way to the plot at hand though, is while the children are having their spelling lesson, and one little boy, Robert, uses the word tomorrow in a interesting little sentence. "Tomorrow, a bad thing will happen," he says. This is one of the most common elements of fiction, alliteration. This is a key plot point in the story, and if you miss it, you won't understand. Then, after this statement, Miss Sidley begins to see Robert change. It is implied that it is a physical transformation, but you don't get concrete details on this transformation until later in the story. You only learn at first that something is "different" about the way he looks. That something sticks in her mind the rest of the day, plaguing her as she eats her dinner of poached eggs on toast, and haunting her dreams (which are more nightmares, which is interesting because the title of the book this was reprinted from was called Nightmares and Dreamscapes). The story progresses with Miss Sidley seeing more
The plot starts out with a third grade teacher named Miss Sidley. King in the first paragraph of the story aptly compares her to God, by explaining how she knows every detail of her class from those chewing gum, to those wanting to go to the restroom to trade baseball cards instead of use the facilities. King shows this absolute power in her mannerisms, her body language, and the looks that we, the reader, glimpse into her mind. She is described as "a small woman, who had to stretch to write on the highest level of the blackboard." Graying, and plagued with a failing back, which she wears a brace to support, this woman was still feared by all the children. The event that really gives way to the plot at hand though, is while the children are having their spelling lesson, and one little boy, Robert, uses the word tomorrow in a interesting little sentence. "Tomorrow, a bad thing will happen," he says. This is one of the most common elements of fiction, alliteration. This is a key plot point in the story, and if you miss it, you won't understand. Then, after this statement, Miss Sidley begins to see Robert change. It is implied that it is a physical transformation, but you don't get concrete details on this transformation until later in the story. You only learn at first that something is "different" about the way he looks. That something sticks in her mind the rest of the day, plaguing her as she eats her dinner of poached eggs on toast, and haunting her dreams (which are more nightmares, which is interesting because the title of the book this was reprinted from was called Nightmares and Dreamscapes). The story progresses with Miss Sidley seeing more