66 pages • 2-hour read
Insomnia
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Part 1, Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of antigay bias, graphic violence, gender discrimination, mental illness, illness, death, suicidal ideation, and pregnancy termination.
Part 1: “Little Bald Doctors”
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Near the end of September, Helen informs Ralph that she has got a new job at the Derry Public Library. When Ralph goes to tell Bill the news, he finds Bill crying in the park.
Bill explains that his first employer, former history teacher Bob Polhurst, has pneumonia and is dying. He paradoxically frames this as being good for Bob because Bob has also had Alzheimer’s disease for several years. When they first met at Bill’s job interview in 1951, Bob could immediately tell that Bill was gay. Bob did not have an antigay bias, so he hired and mentored Bill. Bill speaks affectionately about Bob’s brilliance and optimism and says that he is feeling preemptive grief for his friend.
While Bill is talking about Bob, Ralph sees a child with a scar on his nose. The aura around the boy gives Ralph telepathic insight into the origins of the scar and the boy’s name: Patrick.
The two are interrupted by a man asking them for spare change. Bill tells the man to leave while Ralph gives him change, causing the man’s aura to shift in brightness. Ralph considers telling Bill about the auras, but decides against it, sharing the news about Helen instead.
Several days later, Helen, Natalie, and Gretchen visit Ralph to warn him that anti-abortion protestors have threatened violence against anyone showing support for WomanCare. This extends to Ralph, whom Ed and his inner circle have designated as one of the “Centurions.” Due to his involvement in recent protest violence, Ed was once again arrested and subsequently fired from his job.
Helen and Gretchen fear that Ed is the real mastermind behind the violence and that he is using Dan Dalton as a figurehead to legitimize his actions. Helen gifts Ralph with pepper spray to protect himself from any assailants.
Helen also talks about her new job, the aftermath of her decision to divorce Ed, and her involvement in the Susan Day Welcoming Committee. Throughout their time together, Ralph perceives his visitors’ auras and balloon-strings, causing him to conclude that they really do exist. When Ralph goes out to play chess with the Old Crocks, he leaves the pepper spray at home.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Ralph comes home one day to find Dorrance Marstellar sitting on his porch. Dorrance claims that he was given a message to pass on to Ralph: Cancel the appointment with the “pin-sticker” man. Ralph assumes this is about his upcoming appointment with the acupuncturist James Roy Hong. Dorrance indicates that he does not know what the message really means, as he tries to avoid getting involved in things.
Instead of explaining how he got the message, Dorrance gives Ralph a book by Stephen Dobyns entitled Cemetery Nights, and instructs him to look for the poem that begins with the line: “Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else” (208). A cautious Ralph reads the rest of the poem, which is entitled “Pursuit,” and thinks that Carolyn would have enjoyed it.
On Sunday, Ralph goes to the library to research the auras he has been seeing. A man approaches Ralph with a hunting knife and threatens to disembowel him for being a Centurion. Ralph immediately recognizes the man from the news as one of Ed’s protest collaborators. The man attacks Ralph, wounding him with the knife. Ralph is surprised to find the pepper spray in his jacket pocket, which he uses to incapacitate his assailant. Ralph realizes that this attack could have been what Dorrance’s message referred to. The librarians call the police to arrest the assailant.
The assailant is identified as Charlie Pickering, the man who attempted to bomb WomanCare the previous year. The chances of tying Pickering’s actions back to Ed are small, considering Pickering’s history of mental illness. Leydecker claims, however, that Ed is losing the support of moderate members of The Friends of Life, and that this will force him to resort to extreme action. As Leydecker takes Ralph home, he comments that Ralph is looking better than before. He invites Ralph to give a statement on Pickering’s assault the following day.
Ralph later realizes that Dorrance was the one who placed the spray can in his jacket pocket and that whoever gave him the message also told him where to put the spray can. Deciding to take Dorrance’s message seriously, Ralph cancels his appointment with the acupuncturist.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
Ralph has a lucid dream in which he finds Carolyn’s head partially buried under beach sand. As the tide rolls in, Carolyn screams, her aura dark. Ralph tries to dig her out, but the tide washes her away, making her look as she did when she was undergoing chemotherapy. Carolyn warns Ralph to look out for “white-man tracks.” Her tumor pops open, sending a swarm of black bugs out onto the beach.
Ralph wakes up from his nightmare and goes to the living room to try falling back asleep. Through the window, he sees two small bald men in white smocks exiting May Locher’s house. Ralph retrieves binoculars to get a closer look and remembers that Ed had referred to the “little bald doctors” before. The doctors have nondescript faces with no identifying marks. While they both have auras, neither one has a balloon-string.
Ralph realizes that the one of the doctors is carrying a long pair of scissors. This prompts him to place an anonymous call to 911. Ralph assures himself that he isn’t dreaming or hallucinating when Rosalie sniffs the tracks the doctors leave behind.
The police arrive at May’s house and break the door open when they get no response. May is soon wheeled out on a stretcher, having been found dead. Ralph wishes he were dead as well.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary
Ralph, accompanied by Leydecker, goes to the courthouse to give his statement on his assault. When they return to the police station, Ralph comments on a poster Leydecker owns, mocking Susan Day in anticipation of her upcoming rally. Leydecker distances himself from it, explaining that his colleagues put it up when they learned that he would be placed on Susan Day’s security detail.
Leydecker is also quick to distance himself from Susan Day’s political views because he is Catholic. He is anxious about the rally because it will continue to stir tensions within Derry even after Susan Day is gone. He believes that all the pro-choice movement really wants is vindication over the anti-abortion side, citing Pickering’s recent assault on Ralph as evidence that the pro-choice movement doesn’t really care about him becoming collateral damage.
Leydecker informs Ralph that Pickering is unlikely to seek bail as it costs thousands of dollars, which neither he nor The Friends of Life can spare. Before he leaves, Ralph asks for information on May Locher’s death. The police are baffled by the anonymous call that alerted them to check on May, as the autopsy showed no stab wounds. There were also no signs of robbery or violence, which supports the prevailing interpretation that May died of natural causes. Additionally, the house was locked from the inside.
The next morning, Ralph wonders how the doctors entered and exited May’s house. He resolves to tell Bill about his recent experiences to make sense of them.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary
Coming home from a short walk, Ralph is overwhelmed by an explosion of auras all around him. The auras show him what people are doing when they are struck with emotion, such as talking on the phone with someone they love. Trying to shield his eyes from the auras, Ralph nearly walks into a stern neighbor named Mrs. Perrine, who scolds him for being careless. She begrudgingly offers to mend his shirt when she observes a tear over the spot where Pickering wounded him. Finally, she comments that May Locher’s death was “God’s mercy.”
Ralph finds Bill on their shared porch. He starts telling Bill about his experiences, beginning with Ed’s traffic altercation the previous year and ending with the auras and the little bald doctors. Bill’s reaction to the story is muted. He gets up, claiming that he needs to call May’s brother to tell him what Ralph shared. Ralph expresses confusion over Bill’s concern for May and her brother. This offends Bill, so Ralph apologizes and allows Bill to go.
After some time, Ralph worries that Bill is calling Leydecker to implicate him in May’s death. Ralph tries to push the thought away by watching a girl playing with a jump rope nearby. He soon realizes that it isn’t a girl, but a third bald doctor wearing Bill’s missing Panama hat. The doctor catches Ralph watching him and mocks Ralph from afar.
Bill returns to Ralph after 45 minutes of talking to May’s brother. After reiterating the concern that Ralph’s 911 call indicated an emergency where evidence pointed to the contrary, Bill suggests that Ralph should finally see Dr. Litchfield about his insomnia and depression, believing that his lack of sleep has severely affected his perception. Ralph resists Bill’s interpretation, which only makes it clear that Bill doesn’t believe anything that Ralph has told him. Enraged, Ralph walks out on Bill.
Part 1, Chapters 6-10 Analysis
In this section, Ralph continues to wrestle with Overcoming the Fear of Uncertainty as he navigates the persistence of the auras and the sense of threat that begins to gather around him. At the start of Chapter 7, Ralph encounters Dorrance Marstellar, who previously appeared in the Prologue during the traffic altercation with Ed. In the earlier encounter, Dorrance was characterized as someone Ralph was not fond of interacting with, precisely because he was intruding on something that wasn’t his business. In Chapter 7, Ralph is again reluctant to speak to Dorrance: “[H]e could have done without a visit from Dor today” (205).
However, this dynamic fundamentally changes from Chapter 7 onwards, as it becomes clear to Ralph that Dorrance may be the only person who can understand what he is going through, as well as providing valid and timely warnings of danger. Dorrance not only predicts Charlie Pickering’s assault, but ensures that Ralph is armed with the pepper spray to overcome him. Whereas Ralph previously thought that Dorrance was “creepy” and “brainless,” he now sees him as someone whose advice he should take very seriously. When Dorrance tells him he shouldn’t get involved in “long-time business” in both the Prologue and Chapter 7, it raises the stakes and heightens the narrative tension, as Ralph understands that he is in danger, but is not entirely sure why, or who may be behind the machinations against him.
There is also a sense that Dorrance’s warning against involvement applies to Ralph’s extra-sensory experiences with insomnia, invoking Free Will Versus Predestination, as Ralph becomes less certain how much agency and control he has in the situation. Dorrance’s warning is filled with ominous ambiguity surrounding the source of Dorrance’s message. Whoever told Dorrance to warn Ralph knows that he is starting to experience the same phenomena of auras that Ed experienced prior to the violent turn his behavior has taken. The warning suggests that other entities have foreknowledge of the risks surrounding Ralph, watching him as he moves toward a dangerous fate.
As Ralph’s experiences with the world of auras becomes increasingly more intense, so does his desperation to seek confidantes to lend him emotional support. He tries to share his experiences with Bill, who has functioned thus far as a sidekick for Ralph, helping him as early as Carolyn’s seizure in the Prologue. However, King subverts expectations by having Bill fail in his expected character function. Rather than support Ralph, he fails to believe what he has been told and antagonizes Ralph by urging him to act against his instincts. His reaction heightens Ralph’s sense of isolation, thus raising the stakes of his journey by making him feel that he must go it alone.
Leydecker, by contrast, appears to be supportive of Ralph as an ally and authority figure, but soon shows an implicit bias against the pro-choice movement that Ralph has unwittingly associated himself with. He insinuates that the supporters of WomanCare do not care about Ralph’s well-being in the wake of his attack. Leydecker ignores the facts that are inconvenient to his political position. In fact, the opposite is true, as Helen’s pepper spray gift is given in the expectation that people will try to harm Ralph. This is the clearest sign that Helen does care for Ralph and his well-being. Leydecker, on the other hand, ignores the fact that it isn’t just WomanCare’s abortion services that are at stake, but the wider offering of services that have helped to liberate people like Helen from abusive home situations. As Ralph’s situation becomes more confusing and intense, he also becomes more uncertain as to who he can trust and who may or may not be as reliable as they seem.
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