“The Dead Zone” by Stephen King: Alienation and Recovery

In talking about books written by Stephen King, I think there is some trepidation when it comes to listing one’s favorites. There are just so many great novels in his horror canon. Nonetheless, I am always quick to point out The Dead Zone (1979) by King as one of my favorites. I read it when I was in my early 20s. I remember staying up night after night reading it until I had completed it in a sad, bleary-eyed mess. It was a fantastic experience.

I think it is an important book.

With that said, in this post, I am going to summarize the novel and provide my overall thoughts near the end.

Synopsis

The Beginning

The novel opens with a young Johnny Smith falling and hitting his head on the ice while skating. This accident causes him to see a future accident. In his vision, a man gets his face burned with battery acid after jumping his car. This comes to fruition, though nobody thinks twice.

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the US, bible salesmen Greg Stillson thinks about his future (and dreams of power). Then after a bout of annoyance with a barking dog, he savagely beats it to death. It is a rough scene:

“Sometimes he wondered if he was going crazy. Like now. He had meant to give the dog a burst from the ammonia Flit gun, drive it back into the barn so he could leave his business card in the crack of the screen door.

Come back some other time and make a sale. Now look. Look at this mess. Couldn’t very well leave his card now, could he?

He opened his eyes. The dog lay at his feet, panting rapidly, drizzling blood from its snout. As Greg Stillson looked down, it licked his shoe humbly, as if to acknowledge that it had been bested, and then it went back to the business of dying.”

(The Dead Zone | Stephen King)

Fast forward to 1970, Johnny Smith teaches English at a high school in Maine. He is also dating one of the other teachers at the school, Sarah Bracknell. They both go on a date that ends in a spectacular showing of Johnny’s latent ability. He wins a “Wheel of Fortune” carnival game multiple times. This upsets the game manager, and so Johnny and Sarah leave.

After taking Sarah home, Johnny is involved in a car accident and falls into a four-year coma. After he awakes he discovers that he can touch people and see events, typically tragedies, in their future. He has a revealing interaction with one of his nurses during the proceeding passage:

“He was still gripping her hand, looking into her face with’ a faraway, dreamy contemplation that made her feel nervous. She had heard things about Johnny Smith, rumors that she had disregarded with her own brand of hard-headed pragmatism. There was a story that he had predicted Marie Michaud’s boy was going to be all right, even before the doctors were one hundred percent sure they wanted to try the risky operation.

Another rumor had something to do with Dr. Weizak; it was said Johnny had told him his mother was not dead but living someplace on the West Coast under another name. As far as Eileen Magown was concerned, the stories were so much eyewash on a par with the confession magazines and sweet-savage love stories so many nurses read on station. But the way he was looking at her now made her feel afraid. It was as if he was looking inside her.”

(The Dead Zone | Stephen King)

The Middle

After Johnny’s ability becomes known, the press wants to capitalize on his “gift.” They inundate him with interviews, but he begins to reject his newfound fame by becoming more reclusive. After a tabloid prints a story on Johnny that dismisses his ability, Johnny believes he can resume his old life. However, the local sheriff, Bannerman, asks him if he can help solve a slew of serial-killings. Johnny is able to adeptly solve the case, which results in a shocking climax.

We cut to the door-to-door salesman (Greg Stillson) who is now the mayor of Ridgeway, New Hampshire. He has found success through making violent threats and other illicit activities against his enemies. Stillson later wins a seat in the U. S. House of Representatives while Johnny is teaching as a tutor in Ridgeway. Johnny decides to meet Stillson, as he has made a hobby of meeting elected officials. During the rally, he has a psychic vision that the vicious, dog-killing politician will eventually cause worldwide nuclear chaos.

“There was the sense of flying – flying through the blue – above scenes of utter desolation that could not quite be seen. And cutting through this came the disembodied voice of Greg Stillson, the voice of a cut-rate God or a comic-opera engine of the dead: ‘I’M GONNA GO THROUGH THEM LIKE BUCKWHEAT THROUGH A GOOSE! GONNA GO THROUGH THEM LIKE SHIT THROUGH A CANEBRAKE!’

‘The tiger,’ Johnny muttered thickly. ‘The tiger’s behind the blue. Behind the yellow.’

Then all of it, pictures, images, and words, broke up in the swelling, soft roar of oblivion. He seemed to smell some sweet, coppery scent, like burning high-tension wires. For a moment that inner eye seemed to open even wider, searching; the blue and yellow that had obscured everything seemed about to solidify into … into something, and from somewhere inside, distant and full of terror, he heard a woman shriek: ‘Give him to me, you bastard!’”

(The Dead Zone | Stephen King)

The End

Johnny decides to take matters into his own hands to stop Sillson. He buys a rifle with the intent to assassinate the prospective politician before he can do harm. However, his plans fail, and he is mortally wounded, but no before Stillson undoes his career with a fatal mistake. Before dying, Johnny touches Stillson and learns that he has prevented the violent future he saw in his premonition.

“Stillson got up abruptly, and with the last bit of his strength Johnny reached out and grasped his ankle. It was only for a second; Stillson pulled free easily. But it was long enough.

Everything had changed.

People were drawing near him now, but he saw only feet and legs, no faces. It didn’t matter. Everything had changed.

He began to cry a little. Touching Stillson this time had been like touching a blank. Dead battery. Fallen tree. Empty house. Bare bookshelves. Wine bottles ready for candles.”

(The Dead Zone| Stephen King)

The book closes with letters from Johnny to his father and other loved ones that detail his motives and rationale. It also features a brief narrative including Sarah, who visits Johnny’s grave and makes peace with his death. It turns out that Johnny’s headaches were caused by a tumor that gave him only a few months to live. Feeling too passive with his psychic gift, he decides to take action. So, according to Johny, there was no alternative to killing Stillson.

Overall thoughts

I love The Dead Zone by King for its pacing. The reader gets to live with Johnny Smith and his strange psychic gift. As some critics have pointed out, there really is not an antagonist for most of this novel. Instead, it relies on the themes of “recovery” and alienation for a large chunk of the story. All of this adds to the pacing of the story. The slowness of it (the day-to-day of the novel) feels a bit truer in regards to a story about suffering.

Additionally, The Dead Zone is both a supernatural and extremely human experience. There could not be more pathos in regards to the character of Johnny. He spends much of the book in quiet contemplation, wondering why he was given the gift of second sight. This confusion causes him great psychological harm. It also puts him in strange situations, including solving murders committed by a serial killer, and saving students from a catastrophe. Johnny isn’t running in and kicking down doors. Rather, he is focused on the emotional impact of his psychic powers. It seems as though he save those around him but with great cost to himself.

Works Cited

King, Stephen. The Dead Zone. Viking Press, 1979.