A review by aaaleksic
Survivor Type by Stephen King

dark reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

I mostly just picked up this book because I wanted a lighter read after reading a longer book, and I came out of it with a new appreciation for Steven King. I only read a part of I.T. before and watched movies based on his books, but actually reading it is a different story. 

 

Survivor Type is a short story chronicling a surgeon's slow descent into insanity after getting stuck on a small island. It’s short, only about 20 pages long, but someone Steven King is able to create a complex character that the reader can’t help but feel sympathy towards. Within the 20 pages we meet him, we find out he’s a poor Italian-American that was involved in drug dealing in order to get by (which later evolved into a habit later on). We get to know his passions, his desires, his background, his hatred of his father, his view of the world, his obsession with his hands- we get to know him very intimately throughout. It makes it so much harder watching him slowly go insane on the island, something he never directly acknowledges, but is relayed perfectly through how Steven King presents his journaling. The journal he writes starts off full of descriptors, optimistic about how he’ll end up, almost laughing it off. Slowly, the worry starts to seep through as he struggles to find food and gets an infection. This infection leads to the subsequent events that take place, and you can begin to witness him growing madder as time goes on (journal entries become more sparse, he cannibalizes himself, he starts using the heroin he got stranded with). It starts to look more hopeless, he thinks of mortal sin and imagines a priest in his past condemning him to Hell. Removing his hands becomes the final straw, it shows how he’s finally given up on life, and as soon as he auto-cannibalizes his hands the journal entries stop. Richard apparently did not want to survive badly enough. 

 

I loved it, despite how short it was. If Steven King's other stories are like this I’ll have to look more into them. I doubt he’s ever experienced this himself, but the story feels raw. Yes, it’s horrific, but it’s not just trying to horrify the reader. It wants you to buy into Richard’s optimism, it wants you to be hopeful, which makes it all the more brutal when you find out what he becomes in the end.