Needful Things

Stephen King (b. 1947) is known as the “King of Horror” and is one of the highest-selling authors of all time. Over the decades, his novels have contributed significantly to the genres of horror, fantasy, supernatural, gothic, and post-apocalyptic fiction. Raised in Durham, Maine, he later attended the University of Maine at Orono, where he met his wife, Tabitha, in a writing workshop and graduated with a BA in English. He and Tabitha had three children, and King initially struggled as a writer, selling short stories and teaching high school English to make ends meet. His experiences with this job inspired the premise for Carrie, his first successful novel. Other popular novels of his include ’Salem’s Lot (1975), The Shining (1977), The Stand (1978), Pet Sematary (1983), It (1986), Misery (1987), and The Green Mile (1996). His memoir On Writing is considered one of the most helpful contemporary works for aspiring writers. Over the years, King has been very open about his struggles with addiction, and it is important to note that Needful Things was the first novel that he wrote after undergoing rehabilitation for cocaine and alcohol addiction.

While the majority of King’s novels are standalone narratives, his decades-long habit of situating many of his most iconic horror stories in the fictitious town of Castle Rock has rendered this particular setting a thoroughly “haunted” locale, populated as it is by the echoes of many different tales. Over the first few decades of King’s highly prolific career, Castle Rock became the setting for titles such as The Dead Zone (1979), Skeleton Crew (1985), Cujo (1981), The Body (1982), The Dark Half (1989), The Sun Dog (1990), and a range of other lesser-known short stories and novellas. 

Because Needful Things is the very last novel that King sets in this location, it also serves as a literary purging of sorts, and from a metafictional angle, the novel can be read as the author’s attempt to put a definitive end to this era of his writing career by deliberately unraveling the town and destroying its very foundations. Even the novel’s earliest chapters contain hints of King’s intentions, for his expository passages pointedly raise awareness about Castle Rock’s long history, referring to sinister events that took center stage in previous novels. For example, the murderous crossing guard, Frank Dodd, was featured in The Dead Zone (1979), while the “dog that came down with rabies and killed Joe Camber” (9) is a clear reference to the novel Cujo (1981). Likewise, the unnamed narrator’s initial commentary summarizes King’s approach to the entire genre of horror, for the narrator’s observation that “trouble and aggravation” often stem from “undramatic things” (7) mirrors King’s own tendency to juxtapose supernatural threats with the mundane doings of everyday life, thereby suggesting that evil itself is an inherent part of human nature.