Something I really appreciate about King is his ability to convey belief in something as right and true even in the midst painting religion as horrid and garish. Everything always comes back to free will with King’s stories, which rings very true for me.

And all that separates one from the other is the path we choose to follow. We are capable of such brilliant good, and such mind boggling evil. I found seeing these big ideas played out on such a small stage incredibly telling of the mixed bag that is humanity. We see bravery and cowardice, greed and selflessness, adaptation and blatant closed-mindedness, all writ small within a glass menagerie of a microcosm.

We see inhibitions lowered, animal instincts rear their ugly heads, and heroism revealed in the unlikeliest of candidates. We witness a cult develop, led by one of the creepiest human antagonists I’ve witnessed thus far in King’s fiction. Little tribes were formed, and leaders of those tribes battled for dominance and greater numbers. I found it absolutely fascinating to see how group dynamics were fostered and altered by such a large group being trapped together. Unable to leave the market for fear of being eaten, this motley crew of strangers and neighbors must decide what to do in order to survive. Unfortunately, the mist is much more than the dense fog it appears to be hidden within the mist are horrid, unearthly creatures that want nothing more than to feed, and humans are evidently pleasing to their palates. In the aftermath of a terrible storm, a strange mist rolls into town. Our main protagonist and his son find themselves trapped in a supermarket with a bunch of other bystanders, ranging from strangers on holiday to year-round neighbors. One thing that King excels at in my opinion is developing believable characters who make believable if unfortunate decisions based on their fear. It’s disturbing and thoughtful and does a fantastic job of putting readers in the shoes of its characters. All that being said, The Mist is a quick little journey into the frightened mind, a dissection of mob mentality and the way fear plays itself out within a group of strangers who are thrown together by sudden and unexplained danger. In my opinion, it went a long towards explaining why King chooses to end stories the way he does, which I’ll get into later. And, as with Carrie, my visit to the Mist completely altered my perception of a story I thought I knew. The Mist is another of King’s works that, like Carrie, has become such an integral part of society’s collective consciousness regarding fear that it’s become almost cliche.

The fog book stephen king