Christine
53 pages • 1-hour read
Stephen KingChristine
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Themes
The Toxic Effects of Obsession and Antisocial Behavior
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, racism, gender discrimination, cursing, child death, death by suicide, substance use, graphic violence, illness, and death.
The novel pairs obsession with antisocial behavior and explores their toxic effects. The characters experience fixations that make them hostile and unfriendly. The theme primarily manifests through Arnie and LeBay’s spirit, which Christine carries on. LeBay’s attitude pits himself against the world. Anyone who stands in his way, whether by challenging him or simply holding another viewpoint, becomes a “shitter.” LeBay has no friends and, according to George, directly or indirectly killed his wife and daughter. LeBay devotes himself to Christine, and the car inherits his inimical spirit. When he sells the car to Arnie, he infects Arnie with infatuation and anger. Arnie’s obsession with the car leads him to fight with his parents and his best friend, and leads the car to nearly kill Leigh. Arnie isn’t inherently fanatical or misanthropic but can’t separate himself from Christine and LeBay, admitting to his best friend, “Dennis, I can’t help it” (991). However, Arnie doesn’t entirely lack agency. His “love at first sight” (141) urgency to buy and repair the car creates the basis for the all-consuming conflict that eventually kills him, his family, and several other characters.
Obsession and antisocial behavior likewise define Buddy. Buddy is the ringleader of his group of miscreant friends, and the novel presents him as a bully who relentlessly torments Arnie in school and at Darnell’s garage. Bullying becomes a fixation. It defines Buddy, so to keep his identity, he must continue to do it. If he became a friendly person, then he’d face the challenging of having to redefine that identity.
Regina, too, demonstrates a combination of fixation and hostility. Like many parents, she insists that her son, Arnie, attend college. When he starts spending his college money on the car, it stokes Regina’s preoccupation, and her stubbornness deepens the conflict between Arnie and both his parents. Michael points out Arnie and Regina’s stubbornness when he quips to Arnie, “You and your mother. Everything will be fine if you do it my way” (409). Had Regina been flexible, she could have disarmed her son instead of pushing him further into the dark world of LeBay and Christine.
Christine consumes the lives of other characters besides her owners, yet they don’t inevitably become bitter like LeBay and Arnie. Dennis and Leigh have nightmares about the car and dedicate themselves to destroying it. Their commitment counters Arnie and LeBay’s seething dispositions: Dennis and Leigh seek to remove the rancor that LeBay’s spiritual domination of Arnie represents. The story thus indicates that obsession and antisocial behavior don’t automatically couple: Christine preoccupies Dennis and Leigh, but they stand up to the car’s egregious energy.
The Question of Fate Versus Free Will
Arnie’s infatuation with Christine raises the question of whether fate or free will controls his life—or, more accurately, whether fate has replaced free will. Dennis describes Arnie and Christine’s relationship as “love at first sight” (141), suggesting that it’s a product of fate. The Eddie Cochran lyrics that preface Chapter 1 reinforce this argument: “Hey, looky there! / Across the street! / There’s a car made just for me” (21). Because Arnie feels as if Christine is “made just for” him, anyone who tries to detach him from Christine is doing more than taking his car: They’re disrupting his destiny. Arnie embraces his fate, so he isn’t cultivating an obsession, nor is he the target of Christine and LeBay’s fixation.
LeBay’s brother George bolsters the fate argument when he tells Dennis:
Ecclesiastes says there’s a season for everything—a time to sow, a time to reap, a time for war, a time for peace, a time to put away the sling, and a time to gather stones together [….] So if there was ‘Christine time’ in Rollie’s life, there might have come a time for him to put Christine away as well (235).
This elusive notion of events occurring at predetermined “times” suggests that people aren’t in control of their lives. What determines events, whether it’s war or selling a car, is an abstract but compelling feeling. George’s comments indicate that LeBay experienced this telling sensation, so he put Christine up for sale. To use George’s diction, LeBay didn’t decide to sell Christine; instead, “time” made the choice. Just as “time” pushed LeBay to sell Christine, “time” gives Arnie the opportunity to buy the car, or in a purer interpretation of fate operating on Arnie, the “time” has come for him to buy the car: He must buy it.
However, Stephen King undercuts the argument for fate by presenting the many ways in which Arnie might not have bought Christine. Dennis might not have lent Arnie the money for the down payment, and Arnie’s parents might not have reacted with such rancor. Had Dennis withheld the money, Arnie couldn’t have bought the car right away. Had Michael and Regina maintained an open attitude about the car, they might have diffused the alienated spirit that it represents. After suggesting that fate played a role, George provides a banal reason for why his brother sold the car, telling Arnie, “Rollie spoke of you as a ‘sucker’ and said he had given you what he called ‘a royal screwing’” (196). This comment implies that LeBay’s motive wasn’t to burden Arnie with a nefarious fate but to sell his car for more money than its dilapidated condition warranted.
The Link Between Objectification and Sexism
Christine’s female name and pronouns link sexism to objectification. The association alludes to feminist thinkers such as Andrea Dworkin, who argue that, in a patriarchal society, women become objects—commodities that men buy. LeBay emphasizes such dehumanization when he describes the brand-new car smell as “the finest smell in the world […] Except maybe for pussy” (28). The comparison likens female genitals to products. They’re not part of the human experience. They exist in the marketplace alongside new cars and their “smell.”
Arnie perpetuates and complicates the sexism. He adopts LeBay’s “pussy” diction and tone, and he prioritizes Christine (an object) over Leigh (a human). At the same time, Arnie anthropomorphizes Christine, treating the car like a human. He speaks to it as if it understands human language: “Come on, doll, what do you say?” (86). He also confers feelings on it: “Christine… she’s really hurting” (245). From another angle, Arnie’s concern for Christine isn’t sexism: It’s a sign of his infatuation. He has compassion for women, but the woman toward whom he feels compassion is an object. Possessed by Christine and LeBay’s spirit, Arnie can’t distinguish between a person and a car.
Separate from cars, the male characters advance the theme in talking about Leigh. Referring to Arnie, Kenny asks Dennis, “She’s his girl, isn’t she?” (817). Arnie later tells Dennis, “You stole my girl” (986). The possessive words “his” and “my” objectify Leigh. As Dennis and Arnie battle over who rightfully owns her, Dennis argues that Arnie chose Christine over Leigh. Dennis’s characterization of Leigh as flawlessly beautiful furthers Leigh’s objectification, conferring an inhuman aura. Through the omniscient narrator, however, King subverts Leight’s objectification, showing that Leigh is a person who has feelings, desires, and agency: She wants to have a positive sexual relationship with Arnie but prioritizes her safety and well-being when she breaks up with him. Leigh’s actions prove that neither Arnie nor Dennis controls her. She makes her own decisions, and she soon ends her romantic relationship with Dennis too.
The novel’s premise undercuts the potency of sexism and objectification through cars and other vehicles. Though men refer to these machines as women, they’re not stereotypical women. Neither weak nor dainty, the cars hold the power. No person stops Christine; in fact, Christine, revealing the supremacy of women, kills many male characters. To destroy Christine, Dennis enlists the septic tank truck Petunia. The final battle is between two “women.” The absence of masculine cars suggests that men lack the tenaciousness and resiliency that cars symbolize.
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