Fairy Tale

“A brave man helps. A coward just gives presents.”

Mr. Bowditch speaks this phrase several times. Its meaning remains opaque until Charlie visits Empis and learns that Mr. Bowditch formed relationships with the Empirians before abandoning them after Flight Killer rose to power. Even though he brought them many useful gifts from his reality, Mr. Bowditch feels remorse about choosing safety and comfort over helping his friends.

“‘You’re a good kid, Charlie. Not sure what I did to deserve you.’

Considering what I was holding back—not only about Mr. Bowditch but some of the shit I’d pulled with Bertie—that made me a little ashamed.”

Charlie believes that his past mistakes preclude him from being categorized as a good person. As he matures, he learns to cope with his own capacity to do both good and bad things, and he is no longer plagued by shame.

“I remembered plunging my hands into the bucket and letting the pellets run through my fingers. Not just greed, but gold-greed.”

Greed is the downfall of many fairy tale characters. Greed leads Mr. Bowditch to exploit Empis’s resources and die full of regret. It leads Christopher Polley to an early grave. In order to avoid misery, Charlie must control his own gold greed once he enters Empis.

“The giant’s name gave me a chill, deep and premonitory. Gogmagog”

Gogmagog is the antagonist of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” the fairy tale that closely parallels Charlie’s adventure. Here, King foreshadows the novel’s final confrontation and provides an early example of the ways literature can provide useful knowledge that helps readers progress through life.

“My old resentments were mostly gone, but not entirely. Fright and loss leave a residue.”

The endurance of loss and trauma is a concept King addresses throughout Charlie’s character arc. Though he learns to cope with his grief in a healthier manner by the end of the novel, the effects of his losses on his character and perspective will remain with him forever.

“This is where your disbelief begins.”

This quote signals the moment that Fairy Tale shifts from an ordinary, slice-of-life novel to a magical portal fantasy. Charlie breaks the literary fourth wall to acknowledge the momentous shift in tone.

“The sundial is the secret of my longevity, and I paid a price.”

One of Fairy Tale’s themes is the price of selfish actions. Mr. Bowditch indulges his desire for wealth and a longer life but pays the price in his lonely and regretful old age. Charlie avoids being tempted by the gold and the sundial and therefore escapes these consequences.

“In Something Wicked, the carousel could make you older when it went forward but younger when it was in reverse.”

Fairy Tale is rife with references to King’s favorite authors, including Ray Bradbury. Here King alludes to Something Wicked This Way Comes, a dark fantasy novel that shares several tropes and plot points with Fairy Tale.

“I watched him go without the slightest regret for what I’d done. Not very nice.”

When Charlie hurts or kills other characters, he is often put off by his lack of remorse. This cruel streak is something he learns to accept and temper throughout his time in Empis.

“I’d already met a version of Rumpelstiltskin, and an old woman who lived in a shoe but below the sign of one; I myself was a version of Jack the Beanstalk Boy.”

This quote speaks to the fateful connection between Empis and our world. King implies that the events of the two realities influence one another, so Charlie’s journey to Empis may have begun long before he learned about the well of the worlds.

“It would probably be something unlikely, like Rapunzel’s tears turning out to have magical sight-restoring properties, but palatable to readers who wanted a happy ending even if the teller had to pull one out of his hat.”

In Fairy Tale, King plays around with irony and meta-commentary on common storytelling tropes. This quote foreshadows his later use of several dei ex machina to save Charlie from situations that should logically be deadly, allowing him to deliver a happy ending.

“I thought I was becoming part of the story.”

The longer Charlie stays in Empis, the more he blends into the fabric of this second reality. It’s as if the role of Empis’s liberator has been laid out precisely for him, playing into the theme of fate vs. free will.

“I had come from a make-believe world. This was reality.”

Charlie ponders the true meaning of reality and muses whether Empis might be just as real as the world he came from. Beyond displaying Charlie’s continued integration into Empis, this quote touches on how absorbing stories can feel just as real as “real” life.

“As I pedaled my way toward the walled city of Lilimar, I realized this silent outer ring was too much like one of HPL’s dark fairy tales of Arkham and Dunwich. Put in the context of that and other tales of otherworldly terror…I was able to understand what was so frightening and strangely disheartening about the empty streets and houses.”

Charlie uses his favorite books and poems to help him parse the strange world of Empis. A lifetime of reading fantasy novels prepared him to navigate Empirian magic, and his reliance on Lovecraft and Bradbury speaks to the way books can serve as important guides in real life.

“I hugged her, then stood up. The thought of finding the gold pellets never crossed my mind.”

Unlike Mr. Bowditch, Charlie’s main motivation to remain in Empis is the relationships he forms with the Empirians and his desire to save Radar. This difference in motivation spares Charlie from Mr. Bowditch’s ultimate fate.

“It gives people hope and hope is dangerous. Wouldn’t you say?”

Hope is a key element of the Empirian rebellion. Fairy Tale was written in part to provide a spot of hope during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. It is King’s contribution to the collective store of hope, which gives us the power to outlast dark times.

“Think Gogmagog is scary? Our world is sitting on a potentially world-ending supply of nuclear weapons, and if that’s not black magic, I don’t know what is.”

Darkness lurking just below the surface is a recurring motif in Fairy Tale. Gogmagog slumbers under Empis, and a dark well of cruelty lies dormant in every heart. Here, King extends the motif to the real world, pointing out that the Earth is its own dark fairy tale. The real world is rife with potentially apocalyptic weapons which, like the powers in the Deep Well, could end us all if ever utilized.

“I’d like to tell you that I came back to my better self at the very end. To say I felt regret. It wouldn’t be true. There’s a dark well in everyone, I think, and it never goes dry. But you drink from it at your peril. The water is poison.”

This quote is the core of Fairy Tale’s philosophy on good and evil. Every human being is equally capable of being good or bad. Good people are distinguished by their continued choice to act selflessly and only sip occasionally from their poisonous emotions and impulses.

“‘Do you know the story about the mouse that pulled the thorn out of the lion’s paw?’”

The fairy tale Charlie references here is a version of the Androcles myth, in which an escaped slave pulls a thorn out of a lion’s paw and is subsequently rewarded with his freedom. It is both a literal parallel to Charlie’s situation as a soon-to-be-freed prisoner and a symbol of the way kindness is rewarded in Fairy Tale.

“Some changes are permanent.”

As Charlie comes of age, he realizes that he will always carry parts of his past with him. His experiences shape him into the man he becomes by the end of the novel, and even the losses he would rather forget form parts of his character.

“I think there’s always a reason for love, but sometimes hate just is. A kind of free-floating evil.”

Some of the novel’s antagonists, like Elden, have specific reasons behind their cruelty. The idea of a free-floating evil explains the existence of mindlessly cruel fairy tale antagonists like Red Molly and Gogmagog.

“The self I had become—was still becoming—was older and wiser than the high school kid who had emerged in that field of poppies. This Charlie—Prince Charlie—understood that Leah had to believe that.”

Charlie comes of age through his time in Empis. He is acutely aware of his heightened emotional intelligence and self-control as the narrative progresses, to the point that he can feel himself becoming a different person.

“I think I know what you want, and now you have it. Here’s your happy ending.”

King acknowledges that though happy endings can be unrealistic, they are what readers often desire. He indulges this desire with Fairy Tale, which is meant to be a book that brings readers joy.