The Lie for Ourselves
Book Thoughts on The Mist by Stephen King
There are two essences of humanity shown within Stephen King's The Mist, a quaint little story of survival and death in a grocery store located in small town Maine, trapped in what may be the end of the world.
The book's thesis could be stated in its last words:
"… I whispered two words in his ears. Two words that sound a bit alike.
"One of them is Hartford.
"The other is Hope."
Hope.
As a father and his son survive the unknown horrors that beset their town, I believe King would have you see their hope, see humanity's hope in the face of the impossible death around it. But I don't believe this is what the text actually states.
A summary: We open with a storm hitting the home of David Drayton. It shatters him and his wife's bay window, and damages their yard. In the morning, David says goodbye to his wife for the last time without knowing it, as he, his son, and their neighbor head to the grocery store to get supplies while the power is out. A mist rolls in across the lake by their home, thick and malefic as they leave behind their home.
They reach the local supermarket and begin shopping. Dozens of denizens of the town are there as well. Then the mist arrives.
It engulfs the store, and people arrive screaming that there are things within the mist.
Here is the first of our human tenants: Curiosity. The Human need to know of the world about them. The need to ask questions and have the prayer within them that those questions are answered. We are curious creatures and that will never leave us.
What is in the mist? What are the new arrivals afraid of?
Some of the people in the store state that there must be nothing out there, simply blind fear. But still, many do not leave the store. A woman asks for help to traverse the mist to her car. Her son is at home, alone, and she must get back to him.
No one helps.
The second tenant of humanity we look at in The Mist is survival. Innate within all of us is fear. Fear is there to keep us alive. Fear is as natural as the hunger for food or sex.
fear keeps the members of the store alive as the woman walks to certain death within the mist.
The tale goes on. Worse things happen. We see the monsters that lay waiting in the mist, parts and pieces, never the complete picture. Just as the characters are afraid for their lives ,they still wonder: what is out there? Why is this happening? Is there anything good beyond the Mist?
What keeps the characters going, our good guys, David and his small (and shrinking) cohort in the store is the push for survival. Are they curios? yes. David constantly wonders if his wife is ok, back at their home, all the while knowing she isn't. He knows he must find out.
But more than curiosity, their sole purpose in this tale is to survive. David protects his son with his life and protects his own life with that same zeal. There is no grand picture keeping them moving, but survival. The need to live trumps all.
Not for everyone in the store, though. They are not driven by hope either, but by the need for answers.
Beyond the normal curiosity, some in the store need to know what is going on outside. They need a reason for the mist. They need a solid answer.
There is no solid answer.
Anyone who says there is, is a fool and a liar.
But there is one who says so in the store. Ms. Carmody has plenty of answers: hell and brimstone and Satan's armies come to earth as caused by man's sin and God's anger.
They are not nice answers, but they are answers. Slowly, consistently, she drones on with her answers, insane and angry, filled with emotion and vitriol, and slowly people come to her way of thinking. Need for answers came above hope. They lose their hope, if they ever had it, in the comfort of someone telling them what is happening. They work their way up to the frenzy of acting on a human sacrifice, "blood is required to repent for these sins," says Ms. Carmody. Her crowd follows. They choose blood. They choose the answer that they know to be true. They choose their fact, pulled from the mouth of an old witch, and nothing more.
Survival and Answers.
People need both. Even after escaping the riotous Carmodian line of thinking in the store, David still risks far more than he should to confirm his wife's death. He needs the answer, and he goes without.
We all go without.
There are no answers to the biggest of questions, no book nor word nor inspiration can truly answer them. There is science and reasoning and work to be done getting us close to answers, and this is good, but there are still always more questions.
So we are left with survival. That drive in us to keep going, to persist despite all a manner of horrors. To run and race and continue, though we do have one answer. We know the outcome of it all at the end. That answer is built in, and it may be the one thing that humanity dislikes knowing most. We survive for as long as we can, and then one day we cannot anymore.
I wonder if there is hope in this? There may be and King's final words may be his thesis of this piece. I don't think I see it, though. But even if there is not hope, we work to survive, and that is enough.
Thanks for giving that a read! In all honesty, this is probably one of my lower ranked King stories, though my bar for him is so high. It is a quick read for this spooky season, and though the endings differ greatly, the movie is also a good watch for those inclined to an even more depressing take. I'm happy to have read The Mist, and will gladly keep it on my shelf, but I'm looking forward to reading something a little less glum next, like Pet Semetary or Cujo. you know, lighter reading.
Feel free to give this a share below and let me know your thoughts on The Mist, the movie or King's other works in the comments below.
Love ya!
Max
Photo from pexels.com and by Gabriela Palai