Different Seasons Book Review
1. Quotations
(1) “You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?”
I told him I didn’t.
“They say it has no memory. And that’s where I want to finish out my life, Red. In a warm place that has no memory.”
(2) “Get busy living or get busy dying.”
(3) “The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear.”
(4) It is the tale, not he who tells it.
(5) There’s no comfort without pain; thus we define salvation through suffering.
2. Summary of the story
Different Seasons is a collection of four novellas, broken down into seasons of the year, that remain some of King’s most spectacular and noteworthy works to date, having had three of the novellas turned into films. The first novella, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, is, oddly enough for a King work, a tale of hope. The novella was later turned into the critically acclaimed film, The Shawshank Redemption, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman.
As Andy Dufrense has recently been convicted for the double murder of his wife and her lover, Andy is sent to Maine’s Shawshank State Prison to serve a life sentence for each of his victims. A banker in his past life as a free man, Andy begins to do the taxes and financial work for many of the prison’s personnel and, as such, brings hope to the life of Red, a man serving three life sentences who was previously without hope before Andy’s arrival.
The second novella, Apt Pupil, also enjoyed a film interpretation directed by Bryan Singer and starring Ian McKellan. The story of a boy who becomes obsessed with the Jewish Holocaust and discovers a former Nazi soldier living within the town he resides is a dark tale focusing on obsessions of a more dark nature and the harm they can bring to the obsessed.
The third novella in Different Seasons, The Body, was the inspiration for the film Stand By Me starring the late River Phoenix. The Body takes a concept King is familiar with and has been explored in novels such as It and Dreamcatcher, the
companionship between childhood friends, and brings a sort of bittersweet drama to the tale. This tale of four boys who set out to find the recently discovered body of a boy not far from their own age is a tale of innocence lost and bonds made stronger. It’s a beautiful tale that tears at the heart and makes the reader question his or her own life and friendship bonds.
The fourth and final entry in the collection is brief, but powerful. Breathing Lessons tells the story of a group of men who meet and share stories within a brownstone in New York. In Breathing Lessons, a doctor tells a most unusual story of a pregnant patient about to give birth under tremendous circumstances.
Here is what King’s idea about each story:
1. Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption--the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo. An unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge
2. Summer of Corruption: Apt Pupil --a golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism. Todd Bowden is one of the top students in his high school class and a typical American sixteen-year-old---Until he becomes obsessed with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town.
3. Fall from Innocence: The Body
Four rambunctious young boys plunge through the facade of a small town and face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality.
4.A winter’s tale: The breathing method--a tale told in a strange club about a woman determined to give birth no matter what. A disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death.
3. A brief introduction to the author
Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and many of them have been adapted into feature films, television movies and comic books. King has published fifty novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has written nearly two hundred short stories, most of which have been collected in nine collections of short fiction. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine. King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. His novella The Way Station was a Nebula Award novelette nominee and his short story "The Man in the Black Suit" received the O. Henry Award. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received
awards for his contribution to literature for his
entire oeuvre, such as the World Fantasy Award
for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian
Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).
4. My reflections on this novel
It is a book consists of four stories and written by Stephen King, the King of Macabre. This story has nothing remotely resembling macabre but King still Rules. I started reading it at high school, though the book I read that time was in Chinese. and I’ve read it for another 2 times in college. It made quite an enjoyable read. The book is very well written. One can feel the determination, patience, strong will power and conviction throughout the reading of this book.
The first strory, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. Is really a good one. The story is narrated by Red, who is serving life imprisonment in the Shawshank prison for committing two, (or is it three?) murders. He does not have any guilt for committing the murder he actually wanted to, but feels sad for the other two who accidentally and unexpectedly get killed in the process. Enter Andy, convicted to life imprisonment for killing his, Andy’s and not Red’s, wife and her lover in cold blood. Andy is quite the reclusive and aloof sort of guy who keeps himself to himself in the prison. Over the years, the only person gets friendly with is Red.
Andy is convinced that he is not guilty and he has been wrongly condemned to the prison walls. Instead of accepting or resigning to fate, he patiently, slowly but surely plans his escape and while he is in prison, he finds ways of being alive, alive in the true sense of the word. It reminds me of the line ’’Living is more than merely existing’’.
There is this part towards the end of the book where Red comes out of the prison and then feels that he belongs more to the Shank than the outer world and the idea of committing a petty crime and getting back to prison crosses his mind. By then Andy has already made his jaw dropping escape and he, Red, says to himself that if he tries to get back to prison then it is equal to slapping on the face of everything that he held in awe and admiration of Andy’s spirit of freedom and Hope.
Red says towards the end that it is his story. Then he goes on to say that the reader might think that Red actually plays a small part in the story and the story actually belongs to Andy. He then says that it is a part of him that wanted to be free for 37 years, (Red would have been in the Shawshank prison for that many years) the part of him that had Hope, Hope that was in larger quantity in Andy that made him do what he, Red, wished to do. Be Free.
I bet most of the people have watched the film, but the story itself is better. And this is my reviw of the first story.