"Bag of bones" is the title of the novel I read over the summer. It was written by Stephen King.

Joshua Gendron

Expository essay about literature

BAG OF BONES

“BAG OF BONES” is the title of the novel I read over the summer. It was written by Stephen King. Stephen King always writes his books with fantastic detailed drama, horror, mystery, and sometimes romance, creating a book that is a terrific example of his best writing techniques combined. And this book has them all. “BAG OF BONES” is gripping, suspenseful and unforgettable. Stephen King writes this book with such detail through the eyes of his main character that you can literally visualize the settings complete with all your five senses. He has you on the edge of your seat one-minute, laughing the next and wanting to cry the next.

The main character of this book is the subjective first-person narrator; his name is Mike Noonan. Mike Noonan is an acclaimed writer who recently lost his wife to a brain aneurysm. He is 36 years old at the beginning of the story. “BAG OF BONES” takes place over a four-year period of time. The story has three settings. The first is Derry, Maine, where his Victorian home is. This is the town where his wife dies. He is still in mourning, and since her death he has been unable to write. He is suffering from writer’s block. So he uses stashed books he had previously written to continue publishing books. He keeps his writer’s block a secret. The second setting is his dreams, his haunting dreams of Sarah Laugh’s. For some reason, Mike is drawn back to his lake lodge at Dark Score Lake located in western Maine in a town named Manderly. Named “Sarah Laughs,” after a previous owner, the fourteen-room lodge proves to be haunted. This is the third setting.

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Eventually Mike’s vivid, haunting dreams and nightmares draw him to go back to his isolated lake-side home which is deep in the woods in Manderly. This is an old Yankee town filled with families that go back for many generations. He finds the town familiar, at least on the surface. He later finds that underneath it all, the town has changed. It was held in the grip of a very mean man, Max Devore, a millionaire stock tycoon. While visiting town the next day, Mike meets a young lady named Mattie after coming in to a close encounter with her three-year old daughter, Kyra. He instantly falls in love with the 20-year-old beauty. Mattie is a broke widow living in a trailer. What the town’s people refer to as trailer trash. While trying to start a relationship with Mattie, she informs Mike that her father-in-law, Max Devore, desperately wants custody of Kyra. The statement that follows, exactly as Stephen King has written it on page 360 of the book, shows one example of symbolism: “But Kyra wouldn’t. She was the hood ornament in all of this; doomed to go wherever the car took her” (pg360). Kyra is symbolizing a prize. He uses other symbolism also. In his dreams there are three very large sunflowers as he says “with faces like search lights.” Through his dreams he foreshadows what is going to happen when he goes to the lake house, Sarah Laughs. These dreams are filled with hauntings and terror. And they become more and more vivid. Each time he has the dream he reveals a little more.

Both Mike Noonan and Max Devore are millionaires; they battle for custody through court, and Mattie and Mike win the case. This is kind of the subplot to the story. In the meantime, Mike is being mysteriously haunted through his dreams by Sarah, the owner of the lodge named after her at the beginning of the century, who was gruesomely raped and murdered by Max Devore’s father and other town members fathers. While having a party to celebrate their victory in court, the deceased Max Devore (he had died near the end of the trial) had hired hit men to kill them all; Mattie, Mike, the lawyer, and their P.I. The hit men managed to wound the lawyer, mortally wounding and killing Mattie, who is Kyra’s mother, and slightly injuring the P.I., the whole time Mike was in the trailer-house with Kyra. Mattie dies in Mike’s arms as the P.I. manages to disable the get-away car, and capture one of the men, while the other burned alive in the car. Mike takes Kyra back to Sarah Laughs, where he finally understands why Sarah has been haunting him in his dreams. This is when the sub plot and the plot blend together. The Ghost of Sarah wants revenge. She was raped and killed by Max Devore’s Father, and ever since her death has been haunting the offspring of the murderers to the point that they kill themselves and their offspring. Since Kyra is of the Devore’s bloodline, Sarah is trying to have her killed, and that is why Max Devore wanted custody of her so bad…he wanted to kill her. Mike saves Kyra, and stops the deaths by setting Sarah’s soul to rest.

This is a long book to sum up! In my opinion, this is the best book I’ve ever read, and Stephen King has topped all of his previous novels with “BAG OF BONES.” It is mysterious, scary, mesmerizing, suspenseful, and contains a bit of a love story as well. Stephen King did a great job with this book, it was as if everything finally found a place in the jigsaw puzzle in the end, and a deep understanding overcomes you. I thought most of the story could be related to a true-life experience, except for a supernatural twist, it’s Stephen King after all. He also bounces back and forth through dream and reality and even through time. This book is 732-pages long; it took me a couple of weeks to read it, not being a huge book fan, that says quite a bit, just the fact that I finished it says a lot. I would recommend this book to anyone of high school reading level and above. If it kept my attention, it can keep anyone’s, and it sure made me think. But I will say, being a King book, it does contains a few very strong mature themes, so those who may be offended don’t read it…or go against your morals and read it anyway, because you will enjoy it.