Reading Journal #3- The Body

     죽음. Death. I think it sounds more horrifying in Korean than in English. When I was about 6 years old, I lost my materal grandmother. From then, I'd seen my materal grandfather passed away, and about a year ago, my paternal grandfather left us. As I grow up, I know that I'll face a lot more deaths of belovings, and gradually I would get used to it, but it is still harsh for me to face beloving one's death. And it was most dreadful when I saw my grandmother passing away; that was the first death I saw. I remember myself pulling the coverlet up to my head and hid myself from the world at that night. Emotions within that action were complicated, but mostly consisted of sadness, fear, and spiritless doubt about living a life.
But from then, as I grew older, I became somewhat curious about life, death, and afterlife. I faced them in school and tend to think about them rationally.
I think this process is common in most cases when we face mysterious things. We first fear them, get away from them, but some time after, we feel curious and try to contact them. That's how you get used to the things.
     This novella "The Body" and movie "Stand By Me" are excelllent pieces that portrays those processes. The story is basically of four young boys having a one-night journey to see the dead body. If this was all, I might not recommend this pieces to others, but there are more than this. Both of them tend to focus on the relationship and conversation of the boys rather than the journey itself. For instance, Gordie and Chris having a talk at the night reveals prejudiced and ruthless society for a kid in poor-white family. In the conversation, Chris says "what if other guys like ~~~ stole milk money?" and this tells that different attitude of adults have discriminated him and made him to 'act that way'.
     In addition, the movie carries about messages about children problems. The four main characters all carry problems within their family. For instance, Gordie, the narrator, is described as an unwanted child from his family and nobody tend to pay attention to him under the shadow of Gordie's brother Dennis's death. Teddy is a son of ex-soldier who fought at Normandy, who now became insane and burns Teddy's one ear. Vern is a kid having his brother bullying him. Since this novella is analized as the piece inspired by Stephen King the writer's childhood, it is actually interesting that he had put those maltreated kids. Also the narrator in the story Gordie resembles Stephen King much since he is the one who dreams of becoming a writer and who actually does.
     'Stud City', a metafiction inserted in the novella is quite interesting since it is actually a small work of Stephen when he was at college. Him as a collegeman, still the theme and the main character's description are pretty much same: aboutmaltreated child. This fact also ensured my opinion that this theme is closely related and based on the writer's childhood.
     The ending (I'm not going to tell this specifically because it can be a spoiler) of this story is quite odd. It's not happy ending, and it's not tragedy at all. Although some sad situations happen to him, the story is not describing those with sadness. It just lists. And from this ending, I remembered what the movie said while having another metaficion "Lard Ass Hogan". "What do you expect?" Because it was not sad nor happy, it seemed realistic. For our real life, what we say to be sad to us sometimes are not sad incidents to others and when time erodes memories, it became just one of dull incidents and you become sympathetic. When the main character Gordie described these sad incidents, I felt similarly. Yes, you cannot expect things to be in certain manner in our life. And this story really became realistic because of this aspect.


     Overall, this story was very touching. It's not that it is sad, but it's like you have something in your heart after you read it. Some lessons? Our sympathy from realistic features? I don't know how to describe this appropriately, so just watch! :P