The Reaper’s Image Essay, Research Paper

The Reaper’s Image

This story is about two men who were transporting an antique mirrow from

the first floor of an old museum to the fifth. Their names were Spangler and

Carlin. This mirror had a history of being haunted, and some people would look

into the mirror and see a hooded figure standing behind them. This figure was

presumed to be Death, and whenever someone would see this figure they were never

seen again. Carlin spends the whole story trying to convice Spangler that this

is really true, but Spangler just calls Carlin crazy. Finally, near the end of

the story, Spangler looks in the mirror and sees a dark inperfection in the

corner, which he mistakes for friction tape. When Carlin tells him that there

is no friction tape on the mirror, Spangler becomes sick and leaves for the

bathroom. The story ends with Carlin waiting for Spangler to return.

I thought that this story was very good, because it started off really

slow and worked it’s way into a really interesting plot. I liked the end

because it never really finished, it left the ending up to the reader. This

seems to be a common theme in a lot of Stephen King’s stories. He likes to

leave the reader in suspense, and keep them wondering.

Here There Be Tygers

This story is about a little boy named Charles who is in elementary

school. He has to go to the bathrrom really bad, but he is afraid to ask

because the teacher does not like him. Finally the teacher sees him squirming

and asks him if he needs to use the restroom. He says yes and is very

embarassed in front of the class, so he leaves quickly. When he steps into the

bathroom, he sees a tiger lying in the corner, and it looks hungry. He goes

back outside and sits there for a while wondering what he should do. His friend

Kenny finally comes up to him because his teacher noticed that he was gone a

long time. Charles tells him that there is a tiger in the bathroom, but Kenny

does not believe him. Kenny goes into the bathroom and does not come back out.

Then even later, his teacher comes and starts yelling at him. She goes into the

bathroom and she doesn’t come back out either. The story ends with Charles

coming back to class and reading a story about a rodeo.

This is another story that ends really abruptly. It was strange because

after knowing that his friend and his teacher were both killed by a tiger, he

goes back to class and begins reading his book. I thought that this was a

decent story, although I didn’t enjoy it as much as some of the others. The one

part that I did find interesting though, was the fact that it never really

explained why a tiger would be lingering in a bathroom anyway. I like that

about these short stories, they never really make a lot of sense.

Cain Rose Up

This story is about a guy named Garrish who had just finished finals in

college and was preparing to go home. His friend and him had taken the test

just minutes before the story began, and both of them felt as if they had not

done a good job. Garrish was a 4.0 student, never doing bad in anything. His

room was always organized and it seemed as though he had his entire life

together. But the night before the final, Garrish went down and got his gun and

hid it in his dorm room. After the test, he sits up in his room and begins

shooting people with the idea that if you don’t eat the world, the world eats

you. The story ends with Garrish shooting people, and a bunch of Garrish’s

friends standing outside his door, and they all think he killed himself.

This was a really odd story. It starts off really normal, with Garrish

speaking with his classmates about a test that they just took. He goes to his

room like everything is normal, and then all of a sudden he begins quoting Cain

and shooting people from his window. A very odd story, if not somewhat

disturbing, much like most of his other short stories.

The Wedding Gig

This story is about a man who was in a jazz group of five musicians.

One day while they are playing in their usual club, a ganster comes in and pulls

aside the main character. The gangster Mike Scollay asks the main character if

he and his band will play for the wedding of his sister. He will pay two

hundred dollars for this, which was a lot of money in the 1930’s. When asked

what the catch is, Scollay proceeds to tell him that his sister is extremely fat,

and she is marrying an Italian while she is Irish. Scollay warns him that he

hates it when people laugh, so the main character tells the band this before

they go to the wedding. At the wedding everything was going fine until about

8pm, when someone from a rival gang of Greeks came in and delivered a message

from the boss. He said that this marriage was a joke, and everyone laughed at

his sister. Scollay runs out and gets killed by the Greeks waiting outside.

Then the story moves into the future, where it turns out that the over wieght

sister became a crime boss and was responsible for the death of theGreek boss,

and overturned two other rival gangs.

This was the one story that was really different from the other ones.

He wrote this story in a more understandable fashion. I think that the main

theme to this story was revenge, because after recieving ridicule and having her

brother killed, she goes on a killing rampage and gets back at all the people

that crossed her at one point in time or another.

Morning Deliveries

This story is about a sick twisted milkman who enjoys savotaging the

items that he delivers to peoples houses. This story is different because it

kept describing very minute details, such as the ant finding food, or the

squirell finding some material for a nest. This milkman seems perfectly normal,

but as the story progressing he starts putting tarantulas in chocolate milk and

poisonous gases inside “empty” milk bottles. This story was very strange and

confused me.

This story was extremely strange and somewhat disturbing. It didn’t make any

sense to me, and out of the blue some psychotic milkman is dropping tarantulas

in peoples chocolate milk. This story is a perfect example of Stephen King’s

sick, yet very interesting mind. It was really odd, but I thought it was a

decent play short story.

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