The Body

Updated June 29, 2023: This is the fifth time I've read this novella and my love and admiration grow every time. It's one of my favorite stories about friendship. It's a masterpiece. I read it this time around with my daughter who loves it, too. Everything written in my review below still holds true.

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This is the third time I've read this novella and my love for it has not diminished one bit. But for this review, I wanted to take a closer look at the structure of the story and try to discover why I love it. Structurally, this novella is flawed. There are some things about it that I do not like at all and detract from the overall plot and narrative. But even with its flaws, it is an amazing story with literary flourishes and fully-formed characters. It has a touch of nostalgia and reveals an endearing remembrance of a friendship whose power is not diminished over time. It's an affecting depiction of the power of friendship. “The most important things are the hardest things to say...” is the mantra of this story. Stephen King repeats this mantra a few times, even parses it at one point, then admits to the irony of an author declaring that words diminish the important things in our lives.

Here's the brief book description: It's 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. Ray Brower, a boy from a nearby town, has disappeared, and twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends set out on a quest to find his body along the railroad tracks. During the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio come to terms with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that doesn't offer much in the way of a future. This novella is the basis for the classic movie Stand by Me.

King shows great descriptive flair and the dialogue is snappy and true to life. Gordie (the narrator and one of the boys as an adult) is likeable and an effective storyteller who reveals the goodness beneath the hard exterior that is beginning to form during this formidable time in their lives. The story is both an adventure and a coming-of-age tale with a bit of mystery. We, the readers, never find out how or why exactly Ray Brower is killed, neither at the time or in hindsight. But the initial spookiness of his death and the morbid desire of the boys to see his body eventually turns into a meditation on life, what Ray Brower will be missing, and what the four friends unintentionally have to look forward to in their own lives. The connection between the four friends is palpable, particularly between Gordie and Chris. They eventually find the wherewithal to do better in school so they can escape the oppressive blue-collar life of the town of Castle Rock. And the connection they have begins with this adventure to find Ray Brower.

Structurally, I feel the novella fails in a couple of areas. First, two short stories are included—in full—within the novella that are examples of what Gordie publishes as an adult when he becomes a professional writer. Unfortunately, they do not add anything to the story of the four, young friends; and the “pie eating contest” could have more effectively been told by young Gordie as a campfire tale within the main narrative. Second, the ending is a letdown. It feels—to me—like King didn't know what to do with a story like this, as it was way outside of his wheelhouse at the time of its original publication. The morbid Ch 33 and deflated Ch 34 (the last two chapters) seem as if King decided to “right the ship” and steer the plot to an ending that would ultimately satisfy his horror-loving readership, rather than find meaning in the things he was exploring in this story: friendship, camaraderie, and many of the important things in one's life. “The most important things are the hardest things to say...” And as we are reminded of this time and time again in the story, King chose not to say them, or even to try to attempt to say what he really wanted to say. A period of great friendship in a person's life can have a lasting effect, one that resonates long after the friendship is over, as is evident in a story like this. In the end, King was and still is known as a horror writer, and there was no way he was going to end this story on a positive note.

But again, even with these flaws, I love this story and novella. The friendship between the boys is the heart of the story and I love their adventure and the way they lookout (mostly) for each other. I love that an adventure like this can be known only to its principal actors, as no one in Castle Rock was aware of what they did during their time looking for Ray Brower, and it's a secret we share with the boys. And I love being reminded that any preconceptions you can have about a writer can be shattered with a curveball like this. King summarizes the story best at the end of Ch 11. “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?” Now that is the true conclusion of this wonderful novella.