Stephen King’s short story, Stephen King’s short story,
The Man Who Loved Flowers,
(From Night Shift)
Stephen King’s short story, The Man Who Loved Flowers manages to craftily blur the lines between love and insanity.
King vividly describes
The only point in the beginning of the story where things don’t seem wonderful is where the radio is playing as the man buys his flowers:
The news describes the problems of the world (including the hammer murderer on the loose), but it’s brushed off because the world seems bright at that moment.
At the story’s climax, the imagery is dark and the sounds described are designed to cause the reader to imagine pure cacophony. Tomcats “making alien love” and a screaming woman are certainly not pleasant sounds.
The most important fears expressed in The Man Who Loved Flowers are the fear of strangers (the unknown) and the fear of love (the fear of loss).
The story takes place on a beautiful afternoon in May of 1963. Everything looks positively radiant with summer coming quickly. Everyone smiles when they see the man in the grey suit because he is so obviously in love.
The young man approaches an older gentleman who is selling flowers and buys the most expensive spill of tea roses.
As the afternoon turns to evening, he makes his way to Norma’s. When he sees her, his heart skips a beat. “It’s always a sweet shock to see her.” But she pulls away. She tells him that he’s mistaken and her name is not Norma.
We are then presented with the true identity of the man. Of course she isn’t Norma - Norma’s been dead for ten years. It doesn’t matter anyhow because he is going to kill her with his hammer. “His name was love, and he walked these dark streets because Norma was waiting for him.”
The story ends with another interesting quote: “If there was anything more beautiful than springtime, it was young love.”
A great thing about The Man Who Loved Flowers is the way the imagery could be so beautiful in such a dark story. Until the final few paragraphs, King describes nearly everything with colorful, happy words.
He writes about
The real charm of the story is where it abruptly becomes dark. He goes from sunlight and happiness to tomcats yowling, dented trashcans, dark lanes, shadows, a hammer, blood, and the gaping black O of terror formed by a woman’s mouth.
Suddenly, the stranger in love is a completely different person than the impression he gave.
The feeling that King evokes from his readers is fear of the unknown (in this case a stranger).
If the man who was so obviously in love is really a hammer murderer, than anyone could be something other than what they may seem.
The man was originally presented in such a positive light it would be hard to imagine him being a killer.
The fear is deeply embedded in our minds because we were positive that the man was simply a nice guy in love. When he turns out to be completely different than we anticipated it becomes frightening: The man who executes women in such a cold and brutal way looks almost like any other upstanding young man walking down the street.
King doesn’t use the man’s name in the story to further emphasize that the killer could be anyone. Giving the killer a name would make him seem like one-in-a-million.
Without a name he could be the next person you see walking down the street!
Another fear King evokes from his readers is the innate fear of love possessed by a great number of people. Often, it can be scary to love someone or to be loved by someone.
Losing someone you care about is often the toughest thing in life to deal with.
The man in the story goes as far as to call himself love.
If love can cause someone to become deranged and violent like the main character than who is to say the same couldn’t happen to your neighbour?
From one aspect, the story can be looked at as a way of saying, “Love hurts.”
It is horrifying to think that love could cause a man to do such terrible things, but it isn’t entirely untrue. People do incredible things for love, both good and bad. One of the scariest things to many people is losing a loved one. Indifference is extreme, but so is loving someone too much.
Stephen King paints an intense picture of a man who on the surface seems normal, but underneath is a brutal killer.
He claims to love, but he commits crimes of hate.
As the imagery changes from violet skies and flowers to dented trashcans and hammers, the reader’s perception of the character alters.
He goes from an average guy in love to an obsessed killer.
When we are presented with the character in the beginning of the story, he has a far off look in his eyes, a half-smile, and a cocked head. We are lead to believe he is in love.
At the end of the story he is presented the same, but we know the truth. The Man Who Loved Flowers is a penetrating dark story dealing with human perception and primal fears.
Hentet fra:
http://www.epinions.com/book-review-6CB8-8C7A6E-3906373B-prod4