An Exercise in Fear and the Futility (and Necessity) of Hope: Reflections on "The Mist"

The Mist is a Stephen King story I've wanted to read for a long time.  I have always been aware of its positive reputation, but when I began hearing it referred to as maybe the best of his novellas, I figured it was high time I gave it a look.  The image above is from the paperback copy of Skeleton Crew I recently purchased.  It’s far from my favorite cover image, but the therapist in me does like the Rorschach-ian quality of it. 

The novella is not necessarily what I expected, and that is in no way a bad thing. This is not a “scary” story; at least it isn’t for me.  But it is, in certain ways, intense and unnerving.  There are some nice short sequences of suspense, but mostly the story works because King so effectively draws us into what is a very disconcerting, hopeless-feeling scenario.  King generates a good amount of empathy for the plight of those trapped in the supermarket, especially by focusing on the distress that comes from knowing so little about what is really happening (and wondering how bad it really is) and increasingly fearing the worst.  Despite the shared desire to survive, the group struggles to take shape as a collective unit, and opposing viewpoints and goals lead to a substantial amount of tension—and therefore narrative drama.  I was easily sold on the way King depicts the variety of emotional reactions and coping responses to a fear-inducing situation.

Part and parcel to this point is the character of Mrs. Carmody, the zealous religious figure who attributes the horrific happenings to God’s judgment.  The only mild critique I would offer is that the character feels underused to me.  Along those lines, one could argue that she feels a tad like a cliché, but ultimately my feeling is that the character enhances the idea in the story that people will interpret circumstances from various points-of-view.  In our culture, in a situation such as King is depicting here, there would almost invariably be one or two fundamentalists who would react in such a fashion.

This novella is another good example of the way King is able to inject a strange, overtly sci-fi element into a story without putting readers off.  The trick, I think, is that King begins the story within a naturalistic, human context and uses that as a lens to interpret the supernatural elements through.  It is highly effective in this case. Admittedly, the story gets off to a slow start, but in hindsight, I can see how vital the initial exposition was in getting us to care for the characters.  By the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find how much I did care.      

Stories told from the first person perspective are not generally my favorites, because I often feel that the writing is not convincing enough—it is too clever, too thoughtful, because the story is being told by an articulate writer who is not assuming the thought processes and expressive abilities of an “ordinary” person persuasively enough.  In this instance, I think King nails it.  The tone, emotion, and level of descriptive detail all seem to come forth from David’s particular observations, memory, and emotional perspective. There is a tone of sadness, worry, and uncertainty that permeates the telling.  Also, the way the protagonist David cares for his son is given an extra layer of sweetness and concern—something that might have been less subjectively affecting had the story been told from a different point-of-view.

The asides, memories, and dreams that David reports on all enhance the depth of the characterizations and feelings with the situation.  King frequently tends to draw upon flashbacks and dreams throughout his work, but rarely has it felt as meaningful as it does in this case.  There is really nothing that struck me as superfluous.

The Mist is a terrific piece of work.  Not only is this story built on one of King's best, most intriguing scenarios, but he gets as much out of it as possible.  Like he always does with his best stories, King achieves more depth here than you might expect.  There are levels of sadness and tragedy that turn the story into something more than it might have been.  There are lovely moments of human connection, and on the other side, moments of felt loss.  It is a story about fear, and probably one of King’s better attempts at conveying how fear works upon a person.  But—and I love that I can so often say this about King’s writing—there is more to it than that.