66 pages • 2-hour read
Insomnia
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Part 2, Chapters 11-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of pregnancy termination, death, illness, animal cruelty and death, and child abuse.
Part 2: “The Secret City”
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
Ralph retreats to the picnic area to look for Dorrance among the Old Crocks, who are also concerned about Susan Day’s upcoming visit. Most of the Old Crocks support abortion rights, except for a man named Faye Chapin, who yells at Dorrance when he offers a correction to Faye’s biblical argument about masturbation being as bad as abortion. The argument gets fierce enough to nearly provoke a fight between Faye and another man named Harley Pedersen. Faye yields when he learns that Pedersen’s wife died during childbirth.
Dorrance leaves before Ralph can talk to him. Faye asks Ralph if he is participating in the Old Crocks’ chess tournament, which they had to delay for another group member named Jimmy Vandermeer, who has cancer and is in the hospital. Ralph is saddened by the news, having been close to Jimmy when they both worked as traveling salesmen. Before he leaves, Ralph asks Faye about the airport service entrance he saw Ed using the previous year. Faye confirms that the entrance is only accessible to airport and airline personnel, as well as a flying school.
Returning home, Ralph sees Rosalie across the street, cowering away from something invisible. Ralph looks for the source of Rosalie’s fear and sees the third bald doctor, trying to entice Rosalie with a scalpel. Ralph telepathically calls out to Rosalie, which brings her to his side, then emits an aura blast from his fingertips to scare the doctor off. The doctor curses at Ralph in a manner reminiscent of Ed’s belligerence at the airport. He vows revenge against Ralph for his interference.
Chasing after Rosalie through the park, Ralph feels a jab of pain that he momentarily worries is the first sign of a heart attack. When the pain passes, he sees Lois crying on a park bench.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
Lois is embarrassed when Ralph asks her why she is crying. Ralph reassures her, encouraging her to share her problems with him. Lois first explains that she, like Ralph, has been experiencing insomnia via premature waking. However, the reason for her crying has to do with Dr. Litchfield.
Lois consulted Litchfield about her insomnia, hoping to get a prescription for sleep medication. A few days later, Lois’s son, Harold, asked if he and his wife, Janet, could have breakfast with her. During the breakfast, it became clear to Lois that Litchfield had broken doctor-patient confidentiality and told them she was experiencing premature cognitive decline. The reason for their visit was to bring Lois to an elderly care facility in Bangor. Lois strongly resented the idea and refused to leave the house with them.
As she explained to Harold why the situation was so offensive to her, Janet indicated that Lois’s diamond earrings were missing. The three spent the rest of the morning searching for the earrings, which never turned up. When Janet reiterated the need to move Lois into a facility, Lois became angry with her, causing her to see Janet in an unusual way.
Ralph realizes that Lois is referring to Janet’s aura, which means that she and Ralph are both experiencing hyper-reality. Ralph uses his perceptive abilities to see into Lois’s memory of Janet and Janet’s aura. He confirms Lois’s suspicion that Janet hid the earrings to force her into accepting Litchfield’s assessment.
Ralph shares his experience of hyper-reality with Lois, which brings her immense relief. He then asks her if she has seen the little bald doctors yet. Just then, Ralph sees the third doctor approaching Rosalie once more.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary
Ralph calls Lois’s attention to the doctor. Since Lois cannot perceive him, Ralph instinctively places his hand over Lois’s eyes, which affects her perception and allows her to see the doctor. They try to get Rosalie to run away, but the doctor reaches out for Rosalie’s balloon-string and cuts it with his scalpel. A dark aura envelops Rosalie, encasing her in what Ralph calls a “deathbag.” After the doctor takes Rosalie’s bandana and ties it around his neck, Ralph teaches Lois how to shoot aura blasts at the doctor with her fingers. Her projectile hurts the doctor, forcing him to retreat.
Though encased in her deathbag, Rosalie remains alive. Ralph and Lois worry that her life is still at risk. Ralph realizes that he saw the third doctor wearing Lois’s missing earrings as well. He speculates that the doctor took them from Janet after she had hidden them. This suggests that the doctor had visited Lois too, though her balloon-string remains intact. Ralph does not tell her any of this.
Lois and Ralph have lunch at Lois’s house. Ralph tells Lois the same story he told Bill, beginning with his encounter with Ed at the airport. Lois expresses her understanding, which she compares to a gentle push into the world of auras. They both share their curiosity over Dorrance’s stake in the matter, suggesting that some other entity has foresight into the events taking place in Derry. Ralph encourages Lois to go to her scheduled card-game that day to keep her away from the third doctor. Lois promises to call him afterward.
Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary
Ralph decides to reconcile with Bill. When he gets home, he sees a note from Bill apologizing for the way he reacted to Ralph’s story. Bill has gone to the hospital to be with the Polhursts, expecting that Bob will die soon.
Ralph gets a call from Leydecker, who informs him that Pickering has been released on bail, thanks to financial support from Ed. It is unknown how Ed sourced the money, especially since the bail turned out to be twice as much as Leydecker predicted. He rules out The Friends of Life, indicating that Ed has been thrown out of their inner circle for his extreme views.
He also identifies two more of Ed’s collaborators for Ralph’s attention: Frank Felton and Sandra McKay. Leydecker suggests that Ralph should ask the police chief for protection, fearing that Ed and his partners may strike again. Ralph declines, believing the police may interfere in his exploration of hyper-reality and what he later refers to as the Derry of Auras.
Ralph tries to call Derry Home Hospital to connect to Bill, but Bill has already left. Ralph speaks to Bob’s niece instead, who indicates that Bob is surviving longer than anticipated. Ralph intuits that the niece wants to euthanize Bob as a mercy to him. She compares death to an incompetent obstetrician who takes too long to cut an umbilical cord. This expression sticks in Ralph’s mind.
Ralph returns to the picnic area, where he finds a note from Faye advising the Old Crocks to visit Jimmy at the hospital. Ralph observes the coincidence that Bob and Jimmy are both near the hospital room where Carolyn died. The pattern of deaths bolsters Ralph’s suspicion that he is being led to go there. Ralph reflects on the little bald doctors and realizes that the doctors are like obstetricians for death, a thought that terrifies him.
Later that afternoon, Ralph’s perception of hyper-reality intensifies, allowing him to see geysers of light and flying creatures in the sky. A fight between two boys produces a powerful aura cloud overhead, which Ralph sees is full of usable energy. This leaves him very hungry, so he goes to make dinner, which he consumes ravenously.
During a brief interaction with Mrs. Perrine, Ralph instinctively drains some of her aura, revitalizing him and reinforcing his perception. Mrs. Perrine later comments that Ralph looks younger. Ralph feels guilty about draining her life-force for his benefit, but then realizes that he has been drawing from other people’s auras ever since they started to observe that he was looking better than before.
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary
Ralph waits for Lois on her porch that evening. When she arrives, he walks up and kisses her. He notices that she is looking younger than she did that morning, too. Lois explained it away to her card-game friends as a side-effect of a new relationship, though she admits that she has been lonely for some time, as people usually ignore the elderly.
Lois explains how she used her aura perception to give herself an unfair advantage at the card-game. Afterwards, she drained the life-energy of a friend who was envious of her restored youth and beauty. Ralph and Lois share their worries about becoming vampires who prey on the life-energies of other people. They resolve to think more consciously about the use of their new abilities.
There is a car accident outside Lois’s house. Ralph rushes outside to find that Joe Wyzer’s car has hit and killed Rosalie. As Wyzer reaches for Rosalie, Ralph sees his hands disappear under her deathbag. He realizes this is what Dorrance was referring to when he said he couldn’t see Ralph’s hands at the airport.
Lois points out that the third doctor is leaning against Wyzer’s car. Ralph tries to stop the doctor with an energy blast, but it fails to hit him. The doctor steals Wyzer’s pocket-comb as a trophy.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary
Ralph and Lois drive to Derry Home Hospital, hoping to find the other two doctors with either Bob or Jimmy. Ralph explains his theory, which builds on the Greek myth of the Three Fates. In the myth, one of the Fates spins the thread of a person’s life, the second one measures it, and the third one, Atropos, cuts it to mark the person’s death. Ralph believes that the third doctor functions like Atropos, but acts contrary to the other two doctors.
Entering the hospital, Ralph and Lois have an overwhelming experience of the auras contained inside. This leaves them distracted as they try to find their way to Jimmy’s room. The nurse at Central Information initially gives them a hard time accessing intensive care, but then Ralph uses his telepathic abilities to convince her to let them through. Ralph feels guilty about abusing his power in this way. Telepathically, Lois reassures Ralph that the nurse is okay.
In the elevator, Ralph’s abilities allow him to learn that a nearby baby survived physical abuse from their father. The baby’s mother is offended that Ralph is staring, then turns terrified when Ralph communicates that he knows what happened to the baby. Ralph wonders if it is more merciful for the child to live or die, given their family situation.
On the third floor, Ralph is struck with vivid memories of Carolyn’s death, along with the painful anticipation that accompanied it. At one point, Ralph asked to turn off life support, but it took Carolyn longer than expected to die. Ralph sat by her and watched at every moment to see if she had died. When Carolyn died, Ralph was overcome with grief.
Lois alerts Ralph to the presence of tracks on the floor, confirming the presence of the first two doctors.
Part 2, Chapters 11-16 Analysis
King raises the stakes for Ralph by suggesting that Bill and Lois are in danger of suffering a similar fate to Rosalie at the hands of the third bald doctor, invoking Free Will Versus Predestination. Though the doctor’s motivations are unknown at this point, the fact that his interactions with Rosalie have directly resulted in her death drive a sense of menace and inescapable destiny around the doctor’s actions. This adds to the threat posed by Ed Deepneau and his collaborators to both Ralph and Lois, who start to wonder if there is a dark fate awaiting them as well.
If such recent deaths are not random events, as Ralph and Lois fear, then the deaths are controlled by an unseen force that exists outside of ordinary human perception and understanding. Ralph suggests as much with his allusions to the Greek myth of the Three Fates. The Three Fates drive the idea that all of life, including death, is pre-determined and that humanity is powerless to alter it. Consequently, much of ancient Greek tragedy revolved around heroic figures attempting to circumvent fate, which parallels the characters’ attempts to exert control over life and death in King’s novel. While Ralph and Lois fear the possible powers that may be controlling their own fates, their continued determination to resist and assert their own agency suggests that the dichotomy between free will and predestination may not be as stark as it sometimes appears.
In these chapters, King also probes The Complexities of Grief through Ralph’s experience of bereavement. The Prologue symbolized Ralph’s anticipation with the ticking deathwatch, suggesting that it was his awareness of imminent death that haunted him more than the matter of death itself. The novel deepens Ralph’s complex relationship with death by flashing back to the experience of Carolyn’s death in Chapter 16, stressing Ralph’s decision to wait for Carolyn to die: “Sitting there, not wanting to get up even long enough to use the bathroom because the deathwatch had almost run down by then […] There would only be one chance to do it right” (438). Ralph’s outpouring of grief at the moment of her death reinforces the monumental nature of his loss, with his sense of sorrow and disorientation emphasizing how central Carolyn was to his life and identity.
The novel also creates parallels between Ralph’s grief and Lois’s, deepening the ties between the two characters as they draw closer together in this section. Lois, like Ralph, has lost her spouse, and she admits to him that she often feels lonely and isolated in her grief and old age. The fact that Lois also experiences insomnia, just as Ralph does, reinforces insomnia as a reflection of grief in the novel. In sharing their grief and strange experiences of hyper-reality with one another, Ralph and Lois begin to feel less alone and more in control of their problems and emotions. King thus elevates Lois’s role in the narrative, as she becomes both Ralph’s romantic interest and his partner in the quest to untangle the mystery of the auras. While grief can be isolating, their growing connection suggests that it can also present bonding opportunities for those with similar experiences of bereavement.
In the narrative present, King has some of the supporting characters express the idea that death is a “mercy,” adding to the theme of Overcoming the Fear of Uncertainty. Bill views the imminent death of his friend, Bob, as something good for him in the context of his Alzheimer’s illness. Mrs. Perrine refers to the death of May Locher as “God’s mercy.” Bob’s niece also thinks that her uncle’s death would be a “mercy.” Especially in Bill’s case, there is a sense that the mercy being referred to applies more to the living than to the dead themselves. Like Ralph, they are all waiting without any clear sense of the precise moment that death will happen. Even when Ralph and Bob’s niece turn off the life support systems for their respective loved ones to exert a sense of control, death defies them and makes them wait even longer. This stresses the idea that death is unpredictable and unknowable, and that such uncertainty must be faced instead of feared.
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