66 pages • 2 hours read
Stephen KingThe Mist
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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The Loss of Humanity
David finds himself in an extreme situation in the wake of the intense storm. The arrival of the mist and the horrors continued within it push the characters to the limits of their humanity. The violence, the death, and the loss of hope force the characters into stressful situations in which they must navigate the nature of their humanity and find new ways to deal with the horrors of their situation. For many people, the intensity of the circumstances leads to a need to indulge the baser instincts. Many characters instinctively reach for alcohol, even before realizing that monsters lurk in the mist. As soon as they lose the comforts of modern life, such as air conditioning or access to a car, they abandon the rules that govern social life. They take alcohol from the supermarket and do not pay, drinking heavily and trying to enjoy their unexpected imprisonment. At the same time, many characters argue and bicker with one another, ignoring the rules of politeness that exist in most social situations. David and Amanda even engage in an illicit affair, satisfying their sexual impulses even though both are in committed relationships. The narrative portrays how extreme situations cause people to abandon the rules and conventions that govern their lives, gradually losing their sense of humanity as they are faced with increasingly violent and dangerous threats.
The bickering and arguing among the characters can be read as a rejection of community. Brent, like many others, is considered an out-of-towner. He is new to Bridgton and not integrated into the community. As such, when the mist descends, he cannot bring himself to build community connections, a tendency that has defined his life in Bridgton. The social experience escapes him, forcing him to believe that everyone is against him. He will not even believe David when David tries to explain (with evidence) that a monster has killed a man. Brent’s behavior represents a fundamental refusal to trust anyone and an instinct to alienate oneself from society. As others define Brent as an out-of-towner, he embraces this identity. He rejects humanistic ideas like community or trust, striking out on his own to fend for himself. Brent refuses to engage with his fellow men, and he dies as a result. Brent’s death shows how a loss of humanity can be fatal.
Unlike Brent, David strives to retain his idea of humanity throughout. He always tries to do what is right, even while his concept of right and wrong becomes increasingly complicated. His affair with Amanda may be a betrayal to Steff, but it is a product of his grief and his uncertainty, as well as a basic need to be close to someone. Whereas Brent rejects closeness and trust, David actively seeks it out. He commits himself to protecting others, especially Billy. At the end of the novel, he is faced with his worst fear: shooting his son as an act of mercy. David does not want to lose this final part of his humanity, so he clings to the hope that the radio is functioning and convinces himself that he has heard the name of a town among the bursts of static. David determinedly clings to whatever humanity he has left, even though he cannot be certain that there are any vestiges of humanity left living in the mist.
The Fear of the Unknown
The fear of the unknown is an important theme in The Mist. Even before the storm, David is aware of how the people of Bridgton divide themselves up into different social groups. The local people all know one another and can trace their families back generations. They are integrated into the community. The knowledge about families past and present is comforting to them, particularly in comparison to the people from out of town whom they resent so much. To the people of Bridgton, the idea of a local person is known and acceptable. The people who buy property nearby and spend their summers near the lake are unknown, unintegrated, and untrustworthy. Brent is considered an out-of-towner, and even David cannot truly abandon his feeling that Brent does not belong in the community and does not represent the values of the people of Bridgton. This division between the locals and the out-of-towners creates a template for the difference between the known and the unknown, which grows throughout the novel.
After the storm, David notices a strange mist moving across the lake. Even at the story’s beginning, the mist challenges his sense of the unknown. The mist defies his expectations, moving unnaturally and not behaving like any weather he has ever seen. When the mist takes over the town, David is overwhelmed by a sense of unknown. He is scared because he cannot explain what is happening, and, even on a sensory level, the mist obscures and hinders his ability to comprehend the world around him. Furthermore, the emptiness of the mist allows David’s fears of the unknown to metastasize. The white emptiness becomes a blank canvas on which David can project his worst fears. He does not need to know what lurks in the mist to be afraid because his mind can conjure up all kinds of horrors that might be on the other side.
Similarly, David and the people of Bridgton never understand what is happening in the military base. They know about Project Arrowhead, but the term’s vagueness means that they project their expectations onto the base. Whether atomics or interdimensional experiments, they blame the unknown military project for the mist, just as they fear the mist without really knowing what lurks inside. The unknown is more terrifying than the known because people’s imaginations can fill in all the details in the most sordid, horrifying ways possible.
However, there are some elements of the unknown that are essential. David is all but certain that Steff is dead, but he cherishes the uncertainty of his wife’s fate. He does not want to know for sure because he needs optimism that she might have survived somehow. This unknown is fatalistic but hopeful at the same time, as David clings to the vague possibility that she might be alive, however unlikely it may be. In such a bleak and brutal world. David needs this tiny sliver of hope. The unknown becomes a vector for hope in a hopeless world, forcing the characters to embrace the unknown because it is all they have left.
Religious Fanaticism
As well as the monsters that lurk in the mist, the characters are forced to deal with the dangers of religious fanaticism. The development of fanaticism emerges slowly throughout the story. For example, David refers to Mrs. Carmody with bemusement in the beginning. She is a woman with folk traditions and slightly strange beliefs, someone who is tolerated in the town rather than loved or trusted. Her antique store is filled with strange taxidermy and items that Steff finds interesting rather than useful or helpful in any way. In the beginning, Mrs. Carmody is a person who has no value beyond her strangeness, and this same strangeness ensures that most people remain distant from her. When the mist arrives, however, the people of Bridgton are forced to reconsider what they deem to be strange, and—quite suddenly—Mrs. Carmody is one of the only people willing to give them an answer for what is happening to them. Those amusing stories that once made David smirk become a threat to his life.
Mrs. Carmody becomes the danger inside the supermarket to match the dangers outside the supermarket. While the monsters in the mist are strange and unknown, Mrs. Carmody is horrifyingly familiar. Not only is she a local person whose name is known to everyone, but she also uses the religious language that many of the people inside the supermarket know all too well. Mrs. Carmody preaches an apocalyptic sermon of complete collapse. She tells the people in the store that God is punishing them and that the end of the world has arrived. The forcefulness of her language and the sincerity of her belief are enough to cover up the gaps in her reasoning, and the lack of any alternative explanation means that many people become convinced that she is right. The strange old woman suddenly calls for human sacrifices, and her ideas are treated with respect. The fanatical interpretation of religion that Mrs. Carmody preaches is so intense that it inspires fanaticism in others.
This fanaticism is so dangerous that it can turn a town outcast into a religious leader in a matter of days, potentially resulting in the sacrifice of a woman and child simply because Mrs. Carmody demands it. The transition from the early portrayal of quirky Mrs. Carmody to zealous Mrs. Carmody at the end of the novel illustrates how religious fanaticism can be so dangerous. Her ideas do not change, but the circumstances in the supermarket and the lack of other explanations slowly make her more believable to the people trapped inside. Rather than Mrs. Carmody developing into someone more sinister, her religious fanaticism remains the same. Instead, the circumstances catch up with her apocalyptic view of the world, and an increasing number of desperate people latch on to her explanations for want of a better world. The danger of Mrs. Carmody is not that she becomes more religious or more fanatical, but that the circumstances change so much that her religious fanaticism seems like the only viable option for the desperate people inside the supermarket.
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