61 pages 2 hours read

Night Shift

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1978

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Symbols & Motifs

Possession

The motif of possession (in the demonic sense) allows King to explore the term’s more everyday meaning, questioning the human relationship to the objects and tools in their lives, as well as their relationship with their own bodies. The possession that occurs in “The Mangler” sets the stage by offering a familiar type of possession: a Christian demon exorcised according to Christian procedures. However, the two object-related possessions that follow complicate standard notions of possession. “Battleground” sees an autonomous collection of toy soldiers bring the full weight of their unthinking malignancy to bear upon Renshaw. The force powering them remains undefined, but this is of little issue; in becoming a vessel for the spiteful and latent energies in the universe, they are “possessed” in the most significant sense. The same vague but distinct vindictiveness inhabits the industrial vehicles of “Trucks.” Through these stories, King creates fear of innocuous objects, placing paranoia back into comfortable environments and asking readers to re-examine their relationships with the objects that they own and use.

King also depicts human bodies taken over and utilized by forces outside of their control, leaving their consciousnesses reeling and their minds filled with guilt and horror. Again, the motif first appears in a familiar form. In “Jerusalem’s Lot,” Boone is directly possessed by The Worm’s dark energies and is swept into the ritual summoning until his dutiful attendant shakes him free. However, King quickly moves on to a different form of possession in “I Am the Doorway,” depicting the excruciating process of the alien presence taking over Arthur’s body. “Strawberry Spring” offers yet another sort of possession, in which a nostalgic man comes to realize that he shares his body with a serial killer who makes use of his limbs. “The Man Who Loved Flowers” likewise depicts an innocuous man’s transformation into a serial killer, though this time he allows the man to name the force that possesses him: love. Through these stories. King uses possession as a way of exploring The Relationship Between the Conscious and Unconscious Mind.

Grief and Loss

In the Foreword to Night Shift, King explores the concept of human fear as rooted in mortality. This fear of death punctuates the lives of characters throughout the collection and manifests through the loss of family members and loved ones. King uses his characters’ grief to ground supernatural horrors within the realm of reality. King also uses loss—and the fear of loss—to motivate characters to commit grotesque and often irrational acts. The incorporation of grief and loss, real human experiences, functions to immerse readers in the stories. King’s realistic depictions of humanity foster the suspension of disbelief and emotionally tie readers to the narratives.

Body Weight

Content Warning: This motif reproduces anti-fat bias.

Overweight people populate King’s fictions, though they are rarely the protagonists, unless the story is specifically about their weight, e.g., Thinner (1984). More often than not, the body shape of larger characters is referred to solely in negative terms. In “Night Surf,” Bertie takes several opportunities to comment on his girlfriend’s weight, though he does not accord this same attention to any of the other bodies in the story.

Similarly, “Graveyard Shift” characterizes Wisconsky as “enormously fat” and associates his body weight with slovenliness or laziness. Richie in “Gray Matter” is characterized in the same manner after he is hurt at work and descends into alcoholism. Jim Norman’s attacker in “Sometimes They Come Back” and the satyr in “The Lawnmower Man” are each described using the same word, with a large degree of focus placed upon the satyr’s “pendulous belly” (215). A motif of overweight bodies signaling a lack of virtue or value in other character’s eyes is present through the collection.

Addiction and Obsession

King illustrates the detrimental powers of addiction and obsession to explore how internal forces can yield as great a threat as supernatural external forces beyond human control (e.g., monsters, aliens, vampires). In this way, King incorporates both internal and external conflicts to thematically investigate The Nature of Human Relationships and Maliciousness and Human Motivation.

The integration of addiction and obsession motifs exposes the underpinnings of love, including storge (Greek for familial love) and mania (Greek for obsessive love). King has openly discussed his personal struggle with alcohol and cigarettes and threads these addictions throughout Night Shift. In “Gray Matter” and “Quitters, Inc.,” alcohol and cigarettes, respectively, become the vehicle through which the characters are led to grotesque circumstances. Addiction represents human vulnerability, and King suggests that this vulnerability allows greater negative forces to invade the characters’ lives. Richie Grenadine and Jimmy McCann continue to use alcohol and cigarettes to the detriment of their closest family member. As a result, Richie’s son becomes traumatized and fatherless, and McCann’s wife is left without an index finger.

In the Foreword, King also discusses obsession, another internal force that drives characters in the collection. Whereas King portrays addiction as affecting familial relationships, obsession disguised as romantic love, or eros, results in murder. Like addiction, obsession represents human vulnerability but reflects the mental instead of the physical. In “The Man Who Loved Flowers” and “I Know What You Need,” male characters commit monstrous acts under the pretense of love. Similarly, the Unnamed Narrator of "Strawberry Spring” is obsessed with Springheel Jack, an elusive serial killer who may, in fact, be the narrator himself. King includes these human monsters to further showcase that evil is dichotomous—internal and external, human and non-human.

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