The Fear of Peace of Mind--On Stephen King's "1408"

You may not be familiar with the author Stephen King, but you should have heard a little about his work The Shawshank Redemption. "1408" is from the short story collection "The Impermanence". Although it is not as popular as "The Shawshank Redemption", it can be the first horror story I read. It opens a gap in the door between me and horror works.

I am not afraid of heaven and earth, but I am afraid of watching horror movies. For a long time, I thought of it as the culprit for my insomnia. Here's where things get weird. I don't know when it started, but suddenly I wanted to try things I didn't dare to do before with a curious attitude. I finished reading the story of "1408" in one go. Later, I felt unsatisfied, so I watched the movie version as well. There are four endings, but because of copyright and a series of reasons, I can only see the version where the protagonist burns the room. Movies and stories are very different in terms of plot, so this article is a fusion of the story and the plot of the movie.

Hotel haunted hotels are no stranger to horror stories. There are also basements, prisons, secret rooms, and morgues, which are closed places that are easy to render a dark and eerie atmosphere. This environment tends to send signals to the fear-centered amygdala in the frontal lobe of the human brain, and stimulates the body to do some unconscious behaviors, such as goosebumps, screaming, covering your eyes, and running away. In order to enhance the atmosphere, the "1408" movie will add some dizzying mirror movements, as well as high-decibel, uncomfortable sound effects, such as the collision of tables and chairs, the noise of the radio receiving signal, and the sliding rails when the window is opened. rubbing sound. The story is full of figurative descriptions, excerpted from:

 The painting on the wall in the living room is crooked again, and the change is not only these. The woman standing on the stairs stripped off her upper body to reveal her breasts, each of which she held, with a drop of blood hanging from her nipples. She looked Mike straight in the eyes and smiled cruelly. Her teeth were as sharp as cannibal teeth. Beside the railing of the sailboat, the sailor disappeared, only a row of bloodless men and women could be seen. On the far left, the man closest to the bow was wearing a brown wool suit, with a bowler hat in his hand, his hair parted in the middle, bald, down to his eyebrows, in surprise and dazed. Mike recognized it: he was Kevin O'Malley -- the first guest in the room, a sewing machine salesman -- from which he jumped in October 1910. To O'Malley's left are the others who died here, all with the same blank, stunned expressions on their faces. This makes it appear that they are all related by blood, members of the same consanguineous, extremely mentally handicapped family.

The fruit in the still life becomes a severed human head. Orange light glides over sunken cheeks, lips sag, glazed eyes rolled up, cigarette behind right ear.

Of course, this is only understood from the shallowest physiological point of view. As for why horror stories are scary, there are also important psychological reasons. I express my own little opinion, welcome everyone to refute and discuss.

Some people say that "the ignorant are fearless", and those who do not know the danger will naturally not be afraid. I do not agree with this. One of the sources of fear, I think, is the unknown. For example, death row inmates in American prisons wait about a dozen years before being executed. In the past ten years, most of them will be anxious and manic, even if they are held in solitary confinement, there is no opportunity to display these emotions. But when they knew when they would be pushed onto the injection platform, even the day before the execution, their emotions were calm because they knew their fate.

Let's talk about room numbers: the number 13 is considered taboo in the West. So, buildings in the west will skip the 13th floor, or use 12A instead. Strictly speaking, room 1408 is on the 13th floor. Also, add up the room numbers, everyone.

As for the protagonist, he understands the meaning of the room number (although he doesn't believe in the curse of 13), knows that at least 30 people in the room committed suicide, and sleeps peacefully at many crime scenes. As a "knowing person", why are you still frightened after entering the room? This is the second source of fear: the accident. As an experienced horror story writer, the protagonist is naturally experienced in many battles. Facing a room that looks the same at first glance, he looks like "I don't believe in this evil". Who knows, the door is crooked again, the painting has changed again, and there is a liquid like glue flowing. Menu, room facilities, everything in a blink of an eye. And the weird voice on the phone that wasn't human or mechanical: "I'm 9! 9! We killed your friends! Now they're all dead! I'm 6! 6!" .

Fear has another source: sin. I used to have sleepless nights when I committed a crime, afraid of the police knocking on the door, afraid of being haunted by the devil. Why? Because I did bad things. My conscience tells me that I will be punished for doing evil. Even if one day, a black impermanence suddenly appeared in my closet and sent me to hell to meet the King of Hell, I would not be able to escape. Because that's what I deserve.

The crime of the protagonist is not murder and arson, but indifference to his family. In the movie, the protagonist's daughter who had a chronic disease passed away, and he never accompanies her well from beginning to end. In room 1408, he saw his deceased daughter, and then the line of defense in his heart completely collapsed.

The story is about the deceased brother of the protagonist. Regarding the reasons for his brother's death, the protagonists have different opinions, including lung cancer, a tobacco war, and being eaten by a pack of wolves in the snow next to the Connecticut Highway. He even joked about his dead brother. I can't tell the exact cause of my brother's death, but I can be sure that the protagonist didn't care about his brother. Therefore, room 1408 made wooden sculptures of boys and wolves for him, always reminding and condemning him.

There are many phenomena in 1408 that I cannot explain, and neither can science. Like, who is the voice on that phone? In the painting, what's in the wall? If I were to decipher this room, it might be that 1408 was going to punish the occupants, causing them to lose consciousness and be devoured by the sin in their hearts. Those residents may have experienced similar things, or have sins in their hearts that they dare not face. The only difference is that they choose to die, and the protagonist chooses to resist. He used a match to set the whole room on fire and also set himself on fire. Escape the haunted 1408 by walking across the sagging carpet. At the moment he fled 1408, its purpose was not punishment, but redemption.

The protagonist said something like this after escaping 1408: "[The thing in the wall] is definitely not a human being. Ghosts were at least once human." And this should be the heart of man. Whether this room 1408 is real or fictitious, its purpose is to force those who have ghosts in their hearts to look directly at the most real things in their hearts. All ghosts and gods are persuading people to do good.

I thought 1408 would freak me out, but it didn't. Even so (and probably because of it), I still love this story. I don't think scary is the only criterion for a successful horror story. On the contrary, a good horror story will make readers appreciate the peace and beauty of real life more after experiencing and withstood the strong stimulation. Fear is reassuring, and 1408 does it perfectly. It's not just that I have seen too many horror elements, and I have a building in my heart. More importantly, like the protagonist, I can face the unknown calmly and eliminate the sins in my heart. Then, what should I be afraid of?