YOUNG HEROES

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Autumn13

Active Member
Feb 14, 2012
43
101
Now I have another question. I see that many of the heroes in the SK novels are young boys (sometimes girls) between the age of eleven and thirteen (give or take a year or two).
I can't list them all but Salem's 'Lot comes to mind as well as IT, Desperation, The Dark Tower Series, the short story The Sun Dog from Four Past Midnight. Needful Things (even though Alan Pangborn is the hero, there is still the young boy who begins the novel. Then there is Hearts In Atlantis (which I like very much as I am a child of the 1960s). I just remembered Silver Bullet. Danny in The Shining (younger than 11?)
I guess I'll have to stop, I just keep remembering more and more.
All of the characters (except in Needful Things) are intelligent, resourceful and very brave. They are usually wiser than the adults and have much more curiosity as well as fortitude.
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
15,683
92,168
USA
Children are a trip. Their minds are more bendy than adults, so they can accept more weirdness without getting the screaming meemees. Mr. King addresses that in 'Salem's Lot: he points out that, facing the same situation (a vampire at the window), Mark was asleep within minutes after the assault and Matt ended up in the hospital with a heart attack. :) They're good characters in fantasy/horror because you don't have to go to great lengths showing why they believe the impossible. With adult protagonists, you have to make a solid case for why they believe fantastical things, or suspension of disbelief suffers. Pacing of the story can be thrown off. With kids, everyone knows they believe ridiculous things all the time :)
 

carrie's younger brother

Well-Known Member
Mar 8, 2012
5,428
25,651
NJ
I truly think a lot of this has to do with SK being a child at heart himself. I find that when he writes from a child's point of view, he is speaking from personal experience which has stayed with him and has never forgotten. (I'm sort of like that in the way I approach things.) As part of this, SK also has a childish sense of humor at times as well as the potty mouth, sexual snickering and scatalogical references that children of a certain age have. It's all part and parcel of who he is and how he sees the world. Seeing the world through a child's eyes is one of the things I love about his books.
 

GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
358,754
62
Cambridge, Ohio
Most adults are idiots. ;-D
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Kurben

The Fool on the Hill
Apr 12, 2014
9,682
65,192
59
sweden
someadults are idiots, true, but they are so because they have totally forgot the child inside the grownup. As long as you nurture that inner child and drop in to say hello regularly youre fine. Oh, and GNT is really the opposite, a child pretending to be an adult. thats why he is insistent he is an idiot while in reality he is a dear. No child likes to hear that. that embarrasses them.
 

GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
358,754
62
Cambridge, Ohio
someadults are idiots, true, but they are so because they have totally forgot the child inside the grownup. As long as you nurture that inner child and drop in to say hello regularly youre fine. Oh, and GNT is really the opposite, a child pretending to be an adult. thats why he is insistent he is an idiot while in reality he is a dear. No child likes to hear that. that embarrasses them.
...so I'm a blushing childish idiot....:love: