Bag of Bones

“It’s not a question of love or affection. I can give those and I can take them. I feel pain like anyone else. I need to touch and be touched. But if someone asks me, ‘Are you all right?’ I can’t answer no. I can’t say help me.”

Mike characterizes himself as someone who isn’t inclined to ask others for help. This hints at the isolation he experiences during the four years after Jo’s death. It also sets up his connection with Mattie later on, since she becomes the first person that he is willing to be vulnerable around and to open up to about his writer’s block.

“According to gloomy old Dennison Carville, the aspiring novelist should understand from the outset that fiction’s goals were forever beyond his reach, that the job was an exercise in futility. ‘Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there,’ Hardy supposedly said, ‘the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones.’ I understood because that was what I felt like in those interminable, dissembling days: a bag of bones.”

Early on in the novel, Mike explains the novel’s title by citing an apocryphal quote from English author Thomas Hardy and suggesting that he feels like the “bag of bones” that Hardy speaks of. Following the death of Jo, whose validation engendered Mike’s creative abilities, Mike no longer believes in his writing and struggles with Overcoming a Fear of the Future. This stasis causes Mike to feel less than alive until he enters the Devores’ lives.

“My winter dreams of Sara Laughs were like that, each leaving me with a feeling that was not quite sickness. I’ve dreamt again of Manderley, I would think sometimes, and sometimes I would lie in bed with the light on, listening to the wind outside, looking into the bedroom’s shadowy corners, and thinking that Rebecca de Winter hadn’t drowned in a bay but in Dark Score Lake.”

Stephen King uses the allusion to English author Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca to set the reader’s expectations of how Sara Laughs looks and feels. The allusion allows King to conflate the two settings, suggesting the same melancholy and allure that defines Manderley to Sara Laughs before King has even described its façade and layout. In imagining that du Maurier’s Rebecca drowned in Dark Score Lake, Mike also inadvertently foreshadows the revelation that Dark Score Lake was indeed the site of a murder by drowning.

“I was afraid of undoing the block, maybe afraid of picking up the strands of my life and going on without Jo. Yet some deep part of my mind believed I must do it; that’s what the menacing noises behind me in the woods were about. And belief counts for a lot. Too much, maybe, especially if you’re imaginative. When an imaginative person gets into mental trouble, the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing.”

Mike explicates the interpretation of his recurring nightmares, explaining that they drive his decision to return to Sara Laughs. This passage outlines the emotional stakes that surround that decision, while Mike’s musing that “the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing” speaks to The Tensions Between Truth and Fiction that will become more urgent at Sara Laughs.

“It was weeping, a child’s weeping, but I hadn’t a clue as to where it was coming from.

Then it began to fade. Not to grow softer but to fade, as if someone had picked that kid up and was carrying it away down some long corridor . . . not that any such corridor existed in Sara Laughs. Even the one running through the middle of the house, connecting the central section to the two wings, isn’t really long.

Fading…faded…almost gone.”

King uses sound and space to intensify the horror elements of his story. Mike acknowledges the sound of the weeping child as a reality he can recognize, but once he describes the sound moving and changing in ways that don’t match his knowledge of the house, it starts to fall into the realm of the paranormal—a reality that is beyond his ability to understand.

“I think houses live their own lives along a time-stream that’s different from the ones upon which their owners float, one that’s slower. In a house, especially an old one, the past is closer.”

Throughout the novel, King uses the distortion of time to create an unsettling atmosphere. This passage suggests that life in Sara Laughs—and by extension, life at the lake and the town that surrounds it—moves differently than it does in Derry and the rest of the world. This observation heightens the eerie quality of the setting while also foreshadowing the long-lasting impact of the curse that Sara Tidwell has cast on the residents of the lake, invoking The Cyclical Nature of Trauma and Violence: She wants to kill Kyra because, in her view, hardly any time has passed at all since her death. The house itself becomes a key symbol of her ongoing grief and vengeance (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“[A]ny good marriage is secret territory, a necessary white space on society’s map. What others don’t know about it is what makes it yours.”

In this passage, Mike uses the metaphor of “secret territory” to describe the intimacy of his marriage with Jo. However, Mike will eventually realize that Jo kept many things secret from him toward the end of their marriage. This explains why he becomes so upset to hear these secrets. He is angry to think that his exclusive access to Jo’s life could have belonged to anyone else.

“‘Kyra,’ I said.

Mattie nodded. ‘Ladylike.’

‘Kia is an African name,’ I said. ‘It means ‘season’s beginning.’’”

Just as the earlier passage conflated Manderley and Sara Laughs, this passage drives the conflation between Kyra and the daughter Mike expected to have with Jo, Kia. Mike speaks the meaning of Kia’s name to signal the new beginning he sees in his interaction with Mattie and Kyra, suggesting the possibility of Overcoming a Fear of the Future—he is coming to the end of his grief and arriving at the start of a new part of his life.

“He didn’t come all the way across the country ‘cause he wanted a vacation. He wants the kid. To him she’s just another version of Scooter Larribee’s Flexible Flyer. And my strong advice to you is that you don’t want to be the window-glass between him and her.”

Bill initially functions as an ally to Mike, using Max’s backstory to inform Mike of the risks he faces if he chooses to help Mattie. Bill emphasizes the violence Max is willing to commit to get what he wants, seeing Mike as nothing but an obstacle between him and the things he covets most.

“Times around here don’t go between bad and good; if you’re a local, they mostly go between bad and worse. So when a guy like Max Devore sends a guy out with a supply of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills…”

Bill uses the social conditions of life in TR-90 to show how Max has the upper hand in his conflict with Mattie. Max’s greatest strength is his wealth, which he uses to sway the opinions and actions of working-class townspeople according to his goals. As a working-class woman herself, Mattie cannot resist the soft power that Max’s wealth exerts over the town, giving Mike an opportunity to help her and nullify Max’s advantage.

“The cynicism was gone and there was only hurt in her voice. ‘I saw Helen at Christmas, and we promised to get together for the twins’ birthday, but we never did. I think she’s scared to come near me.’

‘Because of the old man?’

‘Who else? But that’s okay, life goes on.’”

Mattie recognizes the disadvantage that her social class puts her in, though what this passage also drives is the depth of her character. Mattie longs to return to the life she had before she met Lance, though the fact that Max has already bought their loyalty reminds her that things will never be the same. Mattie thus isn’t sure how she could embrace Overcoming a Fear of the Future, even if she were to win custody of Kyra.

“There was a clear choice to be made here: either we could be sidetracked into a discussion of the paranormal, or we could come back to the visible world. The one where Max Devore was trying to steal himself a kid.”

This passage explicates the two narrative trajectories that King plays out in his novel. While Mike is dealing with the haunting of Sara Laughs, Mattie is dealing with the human drama of her legal battle with Max. This passage drives The Tensions Between Truth and Fiction because Mike recognizes the urgency and the strangeness of the threat that looms over Mattie. He holds back from addressing his own conflict because Mattie’s concerns are more pressing at the moment.

“‘Because now I do nothing that makes a difference,’ I said at last, and once again the words astonished me. ‘And I do know you. I’ve eaten your food, I’ve read Ki a story and had her fall asleep in my lap…and maybe I saved her life the other day when I grabbed her out of the road. We’ll never know for sure, but maybe I did. You know what the Chinese say about something like that?’

I didn’t expect an answer, the question was more rhetorical than real, but she surprised me. Not for the last time, either. ‘That if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them.’”

This passage marks a turning point in Mike and Mattie’s relationship. As someone who doesn’t ask for help from others, Mike opens up to Mattie about the futility he feels after Jo’s death. The fact that Mattie can predict the Chinese aphorism he is about to reference speaks to her understanding of his situation. This understanding validates Mike’s decision to trust her and encourages him to rely on her more for his emotional needs.

“My wife might have been keeping secrets from me, maybe even having an affair; there might be ghosts in the house; there might be a rich old man half a mile south who wanted to put a sharp stick into me and then break it off; there might be a few toys in my own humble attic, for that matter. But as I stood there in a bright shaft of sunlight, looking at my shadow on the far wall, only one thought seemed to matter: I had gone out to my wife’s studio and gotten my old typewriter, and there was only one reason to do something like that.”

This passage highlights Mike’s reliance on writing as an escape from reality, a behavioral pattern he carries on from the time before Jo died. He outlines the issues that face him on all sides of his life and realizes that the subconscious act of retrieving his typewriter signals that he needs the distraction of writing to pull himself away from the events that overwhelm him. This passage speaks to The Tensions Between Truth and Fiction by highlighting the creative act’s ability to take one away from the issues that hound them.

“‘It was a terrible tragedy, senseless, and there’s still people who could be hurt by it. In little towns things are kind of connected under the surface—’

Yes, like cables you couldn’t quite see.”

While talking to Bill, Mike starts to see how the deaths at Dark Score Lake are all connected to each other, forming the pattern of The Cyclical Nature of Trauma and Violence that plagues TR-90. Mike privately compares these connections to unseen cables, underscoring the fact that the acts of the past continue to exist unseen by those who live in the present.

“Livin on the TR is like the way we used to sleep four or even five in a bed when it was January and true cold. If everyone rests easy, you do all right. But if one person gets restless, gets tossing and turning, no one can sleep. Right now you’re the restless one. That’s how people see it.”

Where Bill was initially presented as an ally to Mike, this passage marks his transformation into a minor antagonist. He threatens Mike by framing his opposition to Max as a decision that harms the good of the town. This is a willful distortion of Mike’s actions, since it assumes that being complicit with Max’s agenda is the moral norm, rather than the transgression.

“I’ll do the things that need to be done. Souls are for liberal arts majors, Noonan. I was an engineer.”

In this passage, Max identifies himself as Mike’s moral foil. After repeatedly offering Mike the chance to save his soul, Max reveals his true opinion of the soul and the moral implication it has on his decisions. Max is the ultimate pragmatist, prioritizing his agenda and disregarding the impact his actions have on other people because they don’t matter to him. In his worldview, everything must function according to the intricate plans he has designed.

“Then how could I not have known it until now? And how was I led here in the first place, full of unknowing happy ignorance?

The answer to both questions was the same. It was also the answer to the question of how Jo could have discovered something distressing about the house, the lake, maybe the whole TR, and then gotten away with not telling me. I’d been gone, that’s all. I’d been zoning, tranced out, writing one of my stupid little books. I’d been hypnotized by the fantasies going on in my head, and a hypnotized man is easy to lead.”

This passage marks a turning point in Mike’s character arc as he acknowledges that his emotional reliance on his creative endeavors has prevented him from fully engaging with the reality of the world around him, speaking to The Tensions Between Truth and Fiction. The subconscious trances he enters whenever he writes becomes a conceit for his ignorance of things that were happening both in his marriage and in his haunted house.

“For years I had fled the problems of the real world, escaping into various Narnias of my imagination. Now the real world had filled up with bewildering thickets, there were things with teeth in some of them, and the wardrobe was locked against me.”

Mike starts to turn away from the new manuscript he is writing when the conflicts that surround him in the real world become as compelling as the fictions he invents in his novels. This develops the theme of The Tensions Between Truth and Fiction as Mike finds himself unable to draw a line between the kind of stories he writes and the life he is living. Mike’s allusions to C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe also invoke the motif of literature in the novel (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“Life was a sickness. I was going to give her a nice warm bath and cure her of it. I raised my arms. In the medicine cabinet mirror a murky figure—a Shape—raised its own in a kind of jocular greeting. It was me. It had been me all along, and that was all right. That was just fine.”

King uses subtlety to underscore the horror of the curse’s influence on Mike. Where another story might have portrayed Mike’s resistance to the curse, King integrates the curse into Mike’s thinking, having him calmly register the impulse to kill Kyra without acknowledging the strangeness of the thought. King ends this passage with Jo’s magic words to signal that Mike is at the absolute nadir of his character arc, relying on Jo’s validation to grant him permission for what he is about to do.

“There is beauty here, and peace. Devore’s right to say this is a world I never knew. It’s

‘Beautiful,’ I said, pulling myself back with an effort. ‘Yes, I see that. But what’s your point?’

‘My point?’ Devore looked almost comically surprised. ‘She thought she could walk there like everyone else, that’s the fucking point! She thought she could walk there like a white gal!’”

During their final confrontation with Mike, the merged spirits of Max and Jared speak their racist worldview. The fact that Max and Jared are speaking as one underscores the idea that the past lives on in the present and that Max’s exclusivist views are a toxic inheritance that reflect The Cyclical Nature of Trauma and Violence.

“Her mouth moved. I heard the sound, but the words were too distant to make out. She was standing right there, but she might have been calling across a wide canyon. Still, I understood her. I read the words off her lips if you prefer the rational, right out of her mind if you prefer the romantical. I prefer the latter. Marriage is a zone, too, you know. Marriage is a zone.”

Throughout the novel, King has driven the idea that Mike’s writing life is inextricable from his romance with Jo while also hinting that Mike hasn’t always been fully aware of the goings-on in his marriage. In this passage, King uses the subconscious trance conceit to underscore the strength of Mike and Jo’s relationship as it is portrayed for the last time. Mike doesn’t need the sensory reality of Jo’s words to know what she is saying. His love for her makes his ability to understand her subconscious, so that he is able to make sense of her without having to hear her.

“‘[K]eeping [love letters] around is a bad idea.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they…’ Can come back to haunt you was what rose to mind, but I wouldn’t say it.”

This exchange between Mike and Kyra hints at Mike’s willingness to let go of writing as an extension of his relationship with Jo, resolving The Tensions Between Truth and Fiction. Mike burns the manuscript of his latest novel because it has served the purpose of ending the curse at Dark Score Lake. If he were to hold on to it, he would be reminded of Jo’s role in writing it, as well as her absence.