Night Shift

Arthur is a former astronaut who was paralyzed by the calamitous landing of his spacecraft, which killed his partner in “I Am the Doorway.” Arthur is sure an alien presence took up residence in his body while he was performing a transit of Venus. He is unable to detect this, however, because of the years of recuperation he undergoes trying to accommodate to his injuries. He lives in Key Caroline, and the locale’s relative seclusion affords the aliens inside him enough privacy to murder a young boy as well as Arthur’s friend Richard without attracting undue attention. Arthur represents a mode of character King frequently explores: the fundamentally good person who, helpless to stop the evil discovered within themselves, must commit self-annihilation. Allegorically, such figures suggest that The Relationship Between the Conscious and Unconscious Mind is often fraught.

Arthur’s position as an astronaut makes him a heroic figure to society, a kind of character King rarely depicts. However, Arthur’s degraded condition brings him back into the realm of King’s marginalized and broken protagonists. He has access to knowledge that separates him from society: Arthur’s ability to perceive the world through alien eyes prevents him from re-entering humanity. He cannot deny that the aliens are malevolent and have the capability to manipulate his body. This war with his own body reflects the years of recuperation he has endured, and he is prepared for the final action he believes he can take. Arthur’s intent to kill himself parallels Boone’s suicide in “Jerusalem’s Lot.” In both cases, the protagonists believe they are eliminating evil and committing a sacrifice for the greater good.

Lester Billings is one of two fathers featured in the collection. Through Billings, King presents the only extended depiction of parenting. The author draws upon the fear of accidental childhood deaths to present a portrait of a warped and dangerously selfish parent. Although Billings laments his culpability in his children’s death, King does not portray Billings as a sympathetic character. In fact, Billings’s flippant regard of his family, in conjunction with his violent tendencies, suggests that he actually murdered his children. For this reason, the story’s concluding scene can be interpreted as Billings receiving his just desserts.

Billings presents several markers of toxic masculinity. He belittles women, particularly his wife, whom he casts moral aspersions upon; he loathes any indications of fear or weakness in his sons; and he fosters violent urges towards his wife and physically strikes his small children. This violence underscores his personality and contributes to his guilt, though he is unwilling to acknowledge it. Each time Dr. Harper attempts to turn the analysis upon Billings, he strenuously rejects it. This contradiction defines Billings: Although he has voluntarily sought out a psychiatrist, he cannot tolerate questioning himself and therefore cannot imagine living his life in a different manner. This rigidity of self interferes with his ability to keep his children safe. He is unable to see beyond the conventions that he has internalized and rationalizes his destructive behaviors toward his family. So unable is he to question his actions and his surroundings that he cannot prevent that which he fears the most: his own cowardice. His final, shocking failing—using his son as bait—portrays a man so filled with terror and self-preservation that he comes to typify the absolute opposite of the paternal role in which he is cast.

In “Battleground,” John Renshaw is an arrogant yet efficient professional assassin: “[He] was a human hawk, constructed by both genetics and environment to do two things superbly: kill and survive” (126). His success as a hired killer affords him a posh penthouse and quite comfortable lifestyle. Renshaw is remorseless and rationalizes that his elevated economic status is “[b]etter than in gutters” (126). He is motivated by greed and skirts the consequences of his murderous profession until confronted with an extraordinary enemy: tiny, animated toy soldiers. As a former military man who relies on his instincts and power of rational thought, Renshaw demonstrates the failure of both when he approaches his unusual circumstances with conceit. Had he set aside his ego and fled the bizarre scene before the soldiers descended upon him, Renshaw might have lived. Although Renshaw realizes that the soldiers will likely defeat him, he maintains his focus and persistence. The third-person limited narration reveals Renshaw’s methodical thought processes to the reader, which adds to the ridiculousness of Renshaw’s predicament and lends credibility to his strategic recourse. In this way, King develops the character of Renshaw through both direct and indirect characterization.

Jim Norman is a young teacher whose traumatic memories threaten to unsettle his mind. He has recently acquired a new teaching position, having been dismissed from his former position after getting involved in a violent incident between students. The reader is given little information regarding the incident, but King suggests that its similarity to the confrontation that killed Norman’s brother affected him on a deep level. The majority of the story is about Norman’s attempt to control the fear that his brother’s murder embedded in his mind—a psychological response he shares with most of King’s characters when they must face the abstract horrors that afflict them. Norman lives out the process they all must endure: the bafflement, the panic, the fear, and, finally, the resolve to combat the entity that haunts them.

In another sense, Jim Norman can be viewed as a trial run for Jack Torrance, the protagonist of The Shining, which King began writing in 1975 (a year after “Sometimes They Come Back” was published). The two characters share many traits. Both are teachers seeking new positions after violent incidents, and both view their increasingly haunted worlds with growing suspicion and fear. Both works also feature scenes in which Jim/Jack interviews for the new job and must admit to failings in his past. Though Norman seemingly resolves his trauma in a way Jack never does, the story’s title hints that the exorcism has simply deferred a true reckoning with his demons.

Larry, in “The Last Rung on the Ladder,” is shaken from his self-focused haze by the suicide of his sister. He represents the career-focused, upwardly mobile individuals of America’s urban centers. In his grief, he is brought back to the heartland and to the warmth and comfort of his childhood barn, but he finds the landscape irrevocably changed. His sister’s suggestion that it would have been better if she’d died that day calls into question every day Larry has since lived. The shallowness of career ambition becomes clear to him. The only way he can find comfort is to imagine her frozen mid-air, unable to land, in a perpetual ecstasy of freefall. Grief has taken his most precious memory while revealing the insubstantial nature of his life.