Stephen king’s, Cell has many interesting points presented within the story and yet the one that speaks the loudest is the point made implicitly about the role of cell phones and technology within our world. The cell phones serves as both a symbolic and physical plot point within the story all the while connecting to the outside world. King writes, “If you make a call or take one, you get some kind of a…what?…some kind of a subliminal message”(king 59). The story itself revolves around the strange happenings that occur in result of cell phones producing an odd signal. This in of itself is extremely important to my focus as it symbolizes the grip that technology and specifically cell phones have the lives of people today and how they have introduced new problems that were not present before their invention.
King being the literary giant he is has always introduced works of horror with his focuse on the human aspect within his stories and attempts to make his telling as realistic as possible. In Cell the same thing is true as King utilizes realism within a city setting and through the eyes of the main character. It allows the readers to connect with the character and be able to put themself in their position in an attempt to increase the “horror” factor in which it successfully does. Overall King once again, through his creative genius presents another story in which its premise and characters truly captivates the reader through its journey.
’m glad you are enjoying Cell so far, Diego. It sounds like you are focusing, at this point, on King’s use of the cell phone as a personified entity causing havoc on society.
Side note: because of your contemporary title (going off of our recommended class list), you may have to look at some of King’s other works and draw a comparison of how he uses an entity in another one of his novels to this one. I actually think that would be a great challenge for you, and would make for a most interesting literary analysis paper!