The Body Reading Journal

The Body Reading Journal

Samuel Seung Min Kim

I remember my first reading on Stephen King. It was a book named <Dreamcatcher>, and I basically hated it. Not because I didn’t like his style, no, but because I just hated the genre of “horror.” And <Dreamcatcher> was precisely a book that could be categorized as a horror novel, talking about the aliens and grotesque scenes of characters vomiting clustered blood and all that.

So when I heard from Mr. Garrioch that The Body is a novella about teenage boys on a journey to find a dead body, I started to think about all the descriptive, grotesque scenes that were pictured in the <Dreamcatcher>.

However, I was surprised to find the dead body not taking a large part inside the novella. There was hardly no descriptions about the dead body itself. In fact, the novella was a bildungsroman (a coming-of-age novel), dealing with the growth of Gordon (who is called by the nickname “Gordie” throughout the short story).

So what part did the dead body take actually inside the story? The body itself, as said above, didn’t take a large part. However, the journey—the trip, the experience, basically everything that Gordon and Chris experienced—on their way to the body, meant more than just something.

Gordon is a boy with a deep emotional scar. He has recently lost his brother who he didn’t even know well, but he is experiencing indifference and coldness from his parents who are consumed in grief. He is basically a boy abandoned from his parents, a boy born with a great literary ability but is losing his chance to utilize it due to his parents too busy crying about something gone for good.

And through the experience, the journey of seeking towards the dead body, Gordon grows up. His emotional pain is ameliorated and relieved. He realizes his potential as a writer.

The person in the center of all this psychological relief and curing is Chris Chambers. He is the “toughest” guy in the gang according to Gordon, but actually he is the most mature guy in the group. He is surprisingly insightful in analyzing the benefits of Gordon, and tries to maximize such abilities. His endeavor is highlighted in Chapter 17, as he cries out loud “I wish to fuck I was your father!” At last, Chris starts to act as Gordon’s father, a father who leads Gordon’s way.

After all such journey, Gordon realizes that he has become a different person. At the end of the book, Gordon, as a 12-year-old boy, says that “The town looks different compared to that before.” He became mature.

Yet, Gordon doesn’t lose his independence in growing up. In the middle of the journey, when Gordon is standing guard, he encounters a deer. And though there was no aid of Chris in such experience, Gordon takes the encounter as a part of him, and reminds himself of such moments in his times of hardships; he has grown up without the help of Chris.

And at the end of all the trip, is a dead body of Ray Brower. The kid means almost nothing to Lachance to him, but the deadness teaches him a lesson; a lesson about mortality, a fate that every human being has to face somehow, someday. Prior to the journey, Gordon has not been very thoughtful about the death of his brother, for he was just an immature kid without the concept of death. However, at the end of the story, all the sequence of learning and growing up that Gordon experiences, comes to an end; along with the priceless lesson about death.