The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone tells the story of John Smith. It is not coincidence that King used the most generic name for a white male living in America. Smith is the epitome of a guy who just wants to live an ordinary life as a schoolteacher. He has a nice girlfriend that he wants to marry and is an all around good guy. The way the book is constructed, it's pretty clear that there were two possible fates for him. One is to live this nice normal life of love and happiness. This is the one he should have had by all rights. And then there is the fate that is forced upon him when a car accident sends him into a coma that lasts more than four years. When he wakes up, he discovers a "gift" that allows him to see into other people's future and past when he touches them or even objects that they have been in contact with. This ability, along with the years he lost, costs Smith everything he wanted in life. I won't give away any more of the plot, but he is forced to make some very difficult choices that cost him dearly.

The Dead Zone features what may be the most likeable character Stephen King has ever created in John Smith. He is humble, self-effacing, funny, and a genuinely nice man. As the life he was trying to build is stripped from him, as he is pushed further and further down a road he never wanted to travel, the reader can't help but feel enormous sympathy for him. The relationship between he and the girlfriend is both vivid and poignant. There are several other characters that are enjoyable to read ranging from John's father to the villain of the piece, Greg Stillson. The story is well constructed and moves along at steady pace.

I've read a number of Stephen King's novels over the years and this is my favorite. It packs an emotional punch that few books of any genre have matched. It's more of a character study than a white-knuckle roller coaster ride, but what it may lack in pure horror it more than makes up for in other respects. This is a book that showcases the author's talent and I would recommend it to all.

I read this book in a week and needless to say, I was obsessed. I couldn't put it down. I really became emotionally attached to the main character Johnny Smith (he gave me Holden Caulfield vibes). King is SO skilled at keeping you engrossed even when there is a lot going on (new characters or situations being introduced) but it's not confusing. I just really love and appreciate his writing and I'm glad I ordered this one. Onto the next one:)

It took almost 45 years to open the cover of this book. My mother had this book sitting in a line of books on a table in my childhood home and always thought “I should read that book”. I have read all the other King books and some ( the Gunslinger series and The Stand), I have read 10 times or more. This book will undoubtedly fall into that category of books that I will read again and again. A short read in comparison to a visit with Roland or Stu and his friends, but a story that grips you and pulls you in from page 1…King just has a way of doing that. So if Mr. King is reading this, I owe you an apology for not pick this book up and reading this masterpiece sooner.

This was one of my favorite Stephen King novels and the movie was excellent also. Imagine waking up from being in a coma for five years after a car accident and finding out the woman you love is married and has a child. Everything has changed for Johnny Smith. Imagine his horror when he finds out he can touch someone and see their future. Some people think he’s blessed but Johnny doesn’t want his “blessing.” After saving the life of a rich man’s child he was tutoring by telling him not to go on a trip, he becomes famous. He’s inundated with requests to find missing people and help people which further burdens him. It’s only after he touches a sleazy, cruel, amoral politician – Greg Stillson that he feels like he has this gift for a reason. He sees the horror that Stillson would inflict on this country (and the world) should he become president of the United States and he tries to discredit him. When that doesn’t work Johnny has to make a decision about that to do. I’m not going to give away the ending but the book is well worth your time and made me cry.

This book isn’t really the typical horror novel Stephen King normally writes but to me it’s something that could happen and a true horror. I sometimes wonder if Mr. King had a crystal ball and could see into the future and see what we have going on in our country right now. And yes, I do believe some people can “see” the future or what a person can or will do. And I also think it would be horrifying to be able to touch someone and “see” into their minds and see their future. This was a masterpiece of a book and I highly recommend it.

The Dead Zone was a re-read for me, as many will be as I go through The Stephen King Challenge, and I forgot how powerful this book was. King was really in fine form during this period in the late 1970s.

Johnny Smith is a young teacher that has started to date Sarah, another young teacher that works for another school. They've started to fall in love and Johnny takes her out on a date to the county fair. They're both excited about the night. Love is in the air and Sarah has hinted that she'd like him to spend the night at her place for the first time. They have a great time at the fair riding the rides and eating all the fair food. As they're walking out, a carnival barker at the Wheel of Fortune lures them over to try their luck. Suddenly, Johnny gets a strange feeling that he knows what number the ball is going to land on and begins to go in a trance-like state. Sure enough, he hits...and hits...and hits, until he has over $500 in his pocket and Sarah mysteriously turns ill. Driving his sick girlfriend to her house, they decide that they'll have to postpone their special evening for when she feels better. Johnny hails a cab and heads for his house. He never makes it home. Two kids were drag racing and hit the cab head on. Johnny is the only survivor...well, kind of. Johnny, battered and broken, is in a coma for 4 and 1/2 years. The doctors had given up on him and eventually Sarah did too. While Johnny was withering away in a hospital bed, Sarah marries and has a little boy. Then, one day, she gets word that Johnny Smith has miraculously come out of his coma. What she was led to believe as impossible has happened. For Johnny, it's as if he's only been asleep for a few days. Instead, his whole life, as he knows it, has been ripped away from him and all he has to look forward to is multiple surgeries and an excruciating recovery. During one of his physical therapy sessions, he touches a nurse and a wave of visions flood through Johnny's mind. He goes into another trance-like state and tells the nurse that she has to hurry. Her house is on fire. She checks and sure enough, Johnny was right and the wary nursing staff look as if Johnny has leprosy and none of them want to get close enough to touch him. For Johnny, this newfound ability is a curse. Newspapers, tabloids, desperate people wanting to know what happened to their missing loved ones all come out of the woodwork and hound Johnny. Then one day, Johnny shakes the hand of Greg Stillson. Stillson is a local politician with big ambitions and Johnny sees what would happen to the world if Stillson is in charge. What would you do if you could go back in time and prevent Hitler from coming to power? This is the burden that Johnny faces.

The Dead Zone hit me like a ton of bricks. Johnny is a very likable character and you want him and Sarah to be a couple. You want his life to be wonderful. You want to see a silver lining. With one kick in the gut after another, it's painful to watch Johnny be forced to travel down the roads that he has to. The characters, storytelling, setting, it's all wonderfully laid out by King. This is King firing on all cylinders. It transports you inside Johnny Smith and makes you ask yourself, "What if this happened to me?" An excellent tale that should be a felony for all that haven't read it.

5 burning tires out of 5

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Much more emotionally and spiritually complex than I ever expected. It's politically a little all over the place but manages to reflect back the conflict in the protagonist. I found myself pleasantly surprised by the structure, which basically works as the creation of a holy warrior/saint who is essentially an nonbeliever. The things the book does with fundamentalism are way more interesting than you might expect from King, who tends to go all in on stuffing fundies in the trash and walking away. The concepts of all-powerful belief and the justifications that it creates are where the book is the most rewarding.

I feel like King started with 2 or 3 basic questions that were interesting to him, and married them up really well:

1. what would a miracle worker gifted with prophecy be like today? How would he be received?
2. What if a zealot or lone wolf nut job were actually right? What if he alone could save the world?
3. What does the rise of an autocrat look like decades before Americans embraced one in real life? What is the chemical mixture to create a cult of personality President in America?

This is a more somber, reflective, regretful King, and an examination of the way community and love strengthen our backs is a balancing aspect that really works.

Stephen King’s The Dead Zone comes across less horror, more science fiction with some paranormal. What I loved most about this novel is the development of its main character, Johnny Smith. King draws the reader in emotionally to Johnny’s life and his gift/curse of being able to see events in the future. In this way, he gives depth to Johnny’s character, and there are many parts where you can empathize with all he must go through.

What would you do if you could forecast and see future events, both good and bad? Is this something you would want to know? Would this be a gift or curse? These are the questions the reader will reflect on while reading The Dead Zone. Johnny can see tragic, often painful or frightening future happenings. He feels a sense of responsibility in trying to alter what is in store. Despite Johnny’s ability, he really comes across as an everyman: he wants a normal, everyday life, to find happiness and love. After a night at local fair with his girlfriend, he is involved in a brutal accident that leaves him in a coma for nearly five years. When he comes back, he realizes how much things have have changed and how much he has lost. His girlfriend has gone on and married someone else. His mother is mentally unstable. His father is just trying to hang on. The ability to see future events is quite profound when he enters “the dead zone”. When the public gets wind of his Johnny’s abilities, his life becomes a bit of a circus. Some label him a freak. Some send him letters asking for his help. Those close to him try to help him get back.

I really felt like the crux of the plot was just Johnny’s cope with life and his new found “power” in the aftermath of the accident. Within this story there are two key conflicts and subplots, though. One of these concerns a mysterious serial killer running rampant terrorizing the small community, preying on children and young women. When the police are desperate, they seek out Johnny’s help. The second conflict involves the true villain of the novel, Greg Stillson, local turned politician and presidential candidate. Greg Stillson may be human in form, but he’s as scary as any beast or ghastly monster or creation from other King novels. Johnny’s intuitions tell him something is very wrong with this guy, and when he sees what the future holds, it is up to Johnny to use his gift.

In an otherwise stellar book, the only negative was the over abundance of political commentary, which seemed forced and unnecessary. King subjects us too often to some political views that have a minor tie in with the plot, but otherwise serve no purpose.

Still, The Dead Zone is a very affecting and suspenseful read. The concluding events—all the leads up to the final confrontation between good (Johnny Smith) and evil (Greg Stillson)—are a stroke of genius and very powerful. King really pulls you in by novel’s end.

The Dead Zone has a bit of everything: emotion, psychological horror, paranormal, suspense, tension. It has a literary quality that surpasses many of King’s other novels. Although often not mentioned as one of King’s better novels, in my opinion, this is King’s best work.

I saw the movie over two decades past. Decided to read the books I saw the movies of where I previously thought why read it if I saw it on screen? Of course the books offer so much more substance than the movies. Yet, I'm a huge fan of Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen so this is not to imply that the movie wasn't entertaining.

This book is about a young man named Johnny, a high school teacher, who survives a fatal a car crash only to wake up with incredible psychic abilities. However, the car crash recovered Johnny's psychic abilities first occurred briefly after he fell, hitting his head at the age of five. Johnny, a good, loving and caring man awakes after four years in a coma. He awakes in a body once strong and lean, now broken. The world has changed. Frightened, in pain and heartbroken, he begins the process of recovery.

After touching staff members at the hospital, he learns of his gift of sight into the past and future. As word gets out, he is embraced as a hero while being cast as a fraud by others. All he wants is to live in peace. He does not care to be famous nor does he want to make money off of human sorrows. He is a humble, funny guy who loves to teach. However, life is more complicated and Johnny realizes fulfilling his calling means sacrificing his own future.

One day, after shaking the hand of an ambitious political wolf, his life course sets and he journeys to save the world from the horrors shown to him that afternoon.

Sad, endearing and emotional, this novel tells of human goodness and sacrifice a young man makes to ensure the continuity of life.

I love King novels that deal in psychic ability and horror, but Firestarter does a better job at the psychic, while Cujo, which takes place in the same town, does a better job at the horror. The gist of Dead Zone is that Johnny Smith gains a psychic ability to read people and find lost things after he comes out of a four year coma that damaged his brain.

Most of the novel is spent following Johnny, but we also follow the rise of a serial killer, and a psychopath politician. King uncharacteristically cuts the tension about 60% into the novel when he resolves the serial killer plot, and for a while we're left without conflict. When we resume the drama with Johnny's struggle with whether to take drastic action to stop the psychopath politician, the force of the novel never quite regains its steam.

You can tell that King wanted to talk about crook politicians in the era of Vietnam and then Watergate, and it's kind of interesting to read about his "psychopath" politician character Greg Stilton, who in many ways resembles Donald Trump. King predicted the dangerous appeal of fascist, inexperienced leaders in times of unrest. It's interesting, but doesn't really satisfy when you're set up for a serial killer drama, which is wrapped up in the span of a few pages.

As a fan of King's prose, it was a nice weekend read that doesn't reach (for me) the level of his other work.