Welcome to the first post on my blog! I am currently reading Nightmares & Dreamscapes, a short story collection by renowned horror story writer Stephen King. So far, I have read from page 1 to page 250. My book consists of multiple short stories rather than one, coherent narrative, but I’ll still try to comment on the most important or interesting short stories I read from this book.
The first, and most interesting, short story I read was “Dolan’s Cadillac.” Basically, it is a short story in which the main character, Robinson, decides to kill a wealthy crime lord named Dolan. In the beginning of the short story, not much information about Robinson’s actual motive is given, which slightly confused me. Later on, Robinson reveals that he wants to kill Dolan because Dolan killed his wife years ago using a car bomb when she was going to testify in court against him. As Robinson thinks of a good plan for getting revenge, he discovers that Dolan makes an annual cross-country trip through Nevada. Eventually, Robinson gets a job with a road paving crew over the summer in order to learn how to operate the equipment needed to dig a hole slightly larger than Dolan’s gray Cadillac. Robinson then makes an elaborate trap by digging a hole in a section of a road. Dolan falls into the trap, and Robinson slowly puts dirt over the Cadillac as Dolan screams.
This short story was interesting to me because I thought that it effectively demonstrated Stephen King’s prowess at telling horror stories, which literally chill your bones. This short story proved that Stephen King is a raconteur who has the ability to instill genuine fear. For one thing, he uses vivid, descriptive phrases that you can actually "see" and picture in your mind. Consider the following sentence:
"I had this funny idea, you see, that he [Dolan] was going to rise up from the back seat, his skin charred to a cinnamon color and stretched over his skull like the skin of a mummy, his hair full of sand, his eyes and his Rolex watch glittering."
This sentence clearly shows that Robinson has an irrational fear of Dolan rising from his sandy grave to haunt Robinson. One can easily picture an undead mummy with a dark brown tinge to its raw, decaying flesh. Personally, I was reminded of the antagonist of the movie, The Mummy. I couldn't help but picture a malicious mummy emerging out of the sand, eyes glittering like stars, in order to find the explorers who stole its treasure, which shows that King did an excellent job incorporating realistic details.
This story was also interesting because of its use of irony. I found two types of irony in this short story: verbal and dramatic. The part when Robinson "promised" to let Dolan out of the Cadillac if he screamed loud enough is an example of verbal irony because Robinson clearly had no intention of letting Dolan walk away unscathed. In fact, Robinson was so determined to exact his revenge and murder Dolan that he rejected the 5 million dollars Dolan offered him in exchange for his freedom. An example of dramatic irony was when Dolan initially had no clue who was burying him in his Cadillac, although we obviously know that the culprit is Robinson, as he is the narrator.
As you can see, the short story, "Dolan's Cadillac," was quite interesting to me because of its use of excellent details as well as its incorporation of two out of the three types of irony. I look forward to reading more of the short stories that Stephen King has to offer in Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and I hope you look forward to more of my blog posts as well.
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