Life got busy for us recently, with a wedding and reception and honeymoon taking up most of our time. I wasn't really able to think about moving forward to The Dead Zone until it was time to get on the plane and head out. Full flights and uncomfortable seating gave me the chance to try and escape reality for a few hours and dive into the world of Johnny Smith and Greg Stillson.
As with most King novels, The Dead Zone is set in Maine. The book opens with a flashback to Johnny's first accident. Johnny doesn't remember this accident, but it's important. Johnny had a serious collision on ice skates with another boy as a young child, and we learn that Johnny's brain got a little rattled on the ice. As we move forward, we see Johnny Smith is a nice young man, a school teacher in a small town. He takes Sarah out on a date to the local fair. Sarah is also a teacher at their school. Her and Johnny have been slowly developing a relationship. Johnny plays a carnival game similar to roulette and 'has a feeling'. He wins and wins and keeps winning. Sarah falls ill, possibly because of bad fair food, possibly out of fear that there's something weird about Johnny. Eventually, Johnny gets her home, and puts her to bed. Any planned romance for the evening is out the window, and Johnny catches a cab back to his place. Along the way, the cab is involved in a head on collision and Johnny put into a coma for 4 1/2 years.
So, the story goes along. Sarah moves on, Johnny comes out of his coma, and seems to have a psychic ability where, sometimes, he can tell people's future simply by touching them. A bunch of stuff happens, but the main plot point is that Johnny shakes the hand of Greg Stillson, a political candidate, and he gets a vision that Stillson is going to become President and lead the country, and possibly the world, to war and nuclear annihilation. Johnny feels that it's his duty, his obligation to humanity, to keep that from happening. He has to kill Greg Stillson. Assassination.
Sounds crazy, right? Well, it is, kinda. With most of King's stuff, you have to suspend disbelief and just embrace things for the context they're written in.
Through Johnny's voice and his plotting, King does raise an interesting philosophical point for debate: If you could go back in a time machine to 1932, would you kill Hitler?
This is the stuff that countless debates and works of Alternate History are made of.
As the story builds towards climax, it presents a number of scenarios that can make you ponder on the value of things in your life. Money, fame, family, love. Each of those things means something different to every person, and I think we all value them a little differently. While I wasn't blown away by the quality of the story itself, it was these things that gave King's overall work more meaning to me than just the surface plot.
I thought the book itself was ok. Nothing great on the scale of 'The Stand', but it was entertaining enough. Returning to the idea of psychic powers, it had a feel, to me, that King was kind of trolling the same ground. Maybe it was something where he had to produce for a deadline, but it was definitely a let down after 'The Stand'. That book would be incredibly hard for anyone to follow. The literary equivalent to 'Pet Sounds' or 'Rumours', it's hard to top a masterpiece, so you do the best you can, then look forward to the next one.
I was trying to think of an angle to approach this installment, and I really wasn't getting anywhere with the main plot of the story. Sure, it's interesting, but it kind of hurtles along with no real resistance up to the finish. King kind of revisits the theme in '11/22/63', but that's way far down the line, and I think that's a good time to muse upon the idea. Instead, I found myself going back to one particular section. In the aftermath of a tragic event, Johnny receives a letter in the mail. One of the points in that letter stuck with me. Maybe it was just the turn of phrase, but it was the trigger to a line of thought that, really, only vaguely ties into the book.
Let me lay it out for you.
Sarah has moved on, but of course, she's the only girl for Johnny. Johnny's simple existence, or return to the world, causes emotional conflict in Sarah despite her happy marriage to another man. Johnny's parents, long married, find themselves strained by their individual beliefs. Johnny works for a wealthy family as a tutor, when his psychic notoriety keeps him from otherwise gainful employment.
Values, beliefs, and turmoil. Johnny successfully mentors his young student to graduation, then has a vision that the traditional graduation party will end in tragedy. He sees lightning striking the restaurant, starting a massive fire, trapping and killing everyone inside. He begs everyone to cancel the party, and starts a panic among the students and their families. Of course, many dismiss him as a charlatan, and go to the party anyway. After all, they'd already paid non-refundable deposits. A few of the students, perhaps believing, perhaps just frightened out of their minds, opt not to go. Instead, they stay at home, anxiously awaiting news they hope doesn't come.
The news comes anyway. Johnny was right. Lightning strikes, and tragedy unfolds, as predicted.
Later, after much other stuff has passed, Johnny receives that letter from the father of his student, thanking him for saving his son's life. As he writes about his grief for not believing in Johnny immediately, he talks about what he could have done to change things. He could have paid out of pocket to cover the cost of the party and cancelled it himself and kept all of the graduates safe at his house. It's only money, right?
Money can buy a lot of things. Some people say that money can buy you anything. Money can solve all your problems. Most people on the other side of that coin would tell you that money doesn't solve everything, and really only lets you trade your old problems for newer, more expensive problems.
Money can buy you happiness, maybe. I'd like to believe that. I'd love to test that theory out. I think that, approached in the right way, it can do exactly that.
However, money doesn't fix everything, and money doesn't always leave you in control.
Money can't buy off the lightning.
