This picture is reinforced by the towns name, Salems Lot, a degenerated form of Jerusalems Lot, which suggests the city of the chosen reverted to a culture of dark rites in images of spreading menace. help you understand the book. Kings paranormal horrors have similar cathartic and educative functions for adults; they externalize the traumas of life, especially those of adolescence. Only by reburying the pastin this case, by literally reburying Sarah Tidwells bodycan matters finally be put to rest. As in fairy tales and Dickenss novels, Kings protagonists are orphans searching for their true parents, for community. On Writing is a poignant, educated, and inspiring book, a book that is sure to help hundreds of struggling writers and motivate still others who picked up the book not for inspiration, but curiosity. He reinvests the archetype with meaning by basing its attraction on the human desire to surrender identity in the mass. "[3] John Mark Eberhart wrote a mixed review in the Sunday Free Lance-Star. The books are daring departures for King in other ways. Soon after, Stephen King became sober and came to a place in his life where he finally understood the priorities in his life. In this way, Stephen King suggested that writing is a part of life that should not be the center of life, but a support to it that all writers should embrace. Stephen Kings books have sold over 350 million copies. Critic George Stade, in his review of the novel for The New York Times Book Review (October 29, 1989), praised King for his tact in teasing out the implications of his parable. The Dark Half contains epigraphs instead to the novels of George Stark, Thad Beaumont, and the late Richard Bachman, without whom this novel could not have been written. Thus reworking the gothic clich of the double, King allows the mythology of his own life story to speak wittily for itself, lending a subtle level of selfparody to this roman clef. Kings main focus, however, is the mobile youth culture that has come down from the 1950s by way of advertising, popular songs, film, and national pastimes. On Writing is organized into five sections: "C.V.", in which King highlights events in his life that influenced his writing career; "What Writing Is", in which King urges the reader to take writing seriously; "Toolbox", which discusses English mechanics; "On Writing", in which King details his advice to aspiring writers; and "On Living: A Postscript", in which King describes his van accident and how it affected his life. It was like starting over again from square one. "[9], Julie Woo for the Associated Press also called King's advice "solid", specifically about dialogue and plot. Pet Sematary is about the real cemetery, he told Winter. However, during his recovery, Stephen King's wife, Tabitha, suggested that he get back to work. Stephen King then moves into the mechanics of writing, offering advice and insight into a successful career that has worked so well for him but remains distant for thousands of others. Her sweeping, befinned chassis and engine re-create a fantasy of the golden age of the automobile: the horizonless future imagined as an expanding network of superhighways and unlimited fuel. After Lances death from a freak accident, Max returned to Matties life in an attempt to get acquainted with his granddaughter, Kyra. During the 1970s, Kings fiction was devoted to building a mythos out of shabby celluloid monsters to fill a cultural void; in the postmodern awareness of the late 1980s, he began a demystification process. As for King the writer, It was one important rite in what would be a lengthy passage. This book is one of Kings few non-fiction works and reads like a textbook for writers. King gives Christine all the attributes of a fairy tale for postliterate adolescents. In The Uses of Enchantment (1976), psychologist Bruno Bettelheim argues that the magic and terrors of fairy tales present existential problems in forms children can understand. Miscellaneous: Creepshow, 1982 (adaptation of the DC Comics); Nightmares in the Sky, 1988. In an anxious era both skeptical of and hungry for myth, horror is fundamentally reassuring and cathartic; the tale-teller combines roles of physician and priest into the witch doctor as sin eater, who assumes the guilt and fear of his culture. In 1985, when the novels (with one exception) were collected in a single volume attributed to King as Bachman, the mortified alter ego seemed buried. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! In a scary passage in Pet Sematary, Louis dreams of Walt Disney World, where by the 1890s train station, Mickey Mouse was shaking hands with the children clustered around him, his big white cartoon gloves swallowing their small, trusting hands. To all of Its protagonists, the monster appears in a similar archetypal or communal form, one that suggests a composite of devouring parent and mass-culture demigod, of television commercial and fairy tale, of 1958 and 1985: as Pennywise, the Clown, a cross between Bozo and Ronald McDonald. Bag of Bones, which King calls a haunted love story, opens with narrator Mike Noonan recounting the death of his wife, Jo, who collapses outside the Rite Aid pharmacy from a brain aneurysm. ), as well as Misery and Pet SemataryKing gluts the first half of the book with Stark/Machines gruesome rampages. What Stark wants is to live in writing, outside of which writers do not exist. Mike and Kyra share a special psychic connection that allows them to share dreams and even to have the same ghosts haunting their homesghosts who communicate by rearranging magnetic letters on each of their refrigerator doors. Originally published in 2000 by Charles Scribner's Sons, On Writing is King's first book after he was involved in a car accident a year earlier. While at Sarah Laughs, Mike meets Mattie Devore, her daughter Kyra, and Matties father-in-law, Max Devore, a withered old man of incalculable wealth who is accustomed to getting anything he wants. Formerly a successful writer of gothic romance fiction, he now finds that he is unable to write even a simple sentence. Christine is the medium for his death wish on the world, for his all-devouring, everlasting Fury. LeBays aggression possesses Arnie, who reverts into an older, tougher self, then into the mythic teenaged hood that King has called the prototype of 1950s werewolf films, and finally into some ancient carrion eater, or primal self. Sarahs ghost may have destroyed his wife and child, but Jos ghost gives him the means to save Kyra. Comparing writing to telepathy, King briefly reintroduces himself and includes an example of literary description. A writer should strive to expand their knowledge of grammar in order to avoid common mistakes that make writing weak. Then Stephen King said to take the novel back out of the drawer, read it through, and make appropriate changes in order to fix narration holes and to emphasize theme and symbolism. Character and voice have always been essential to Kings books, as Debbie Notkin, Harlan Ellison, and others have pointed out. [5]:1718 "C.V." discusses events in King's life that contributed to his development as a writer, such as his early exposure to writing,[5]:2729 his early attempts to be published,[5]:3536 his relationship with his wife,[5]:6166 the death of his mother,[5]:9294 and his history of drug and alcohol abuse.[5]:94100. Stephen King recommended writing the first draft of a novel all at once, taking no more than three months to write an eighty thousand word novel. While writer Stephen King was recovering from a near-fatal car accident, he finished a nonfiction book about the craft of writing. [5]:111137 The fourth section, "On Writing", details King's advice on writing. Nonfiction: Danse Macabre, 1981; Black Magic and Music: A Novelists Perspective on Bangor, 1983; Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King, 1988 (Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller, editors); On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000; Faithful: Two Diehard Red Sox Fans Chronicle the 2004 Season, 2004 (with Stewart ONan). By the agnostic and sexually liberated 1970s, the vampire had been demythologized into what King called a comic book menace. In a significant departure from tradition, he diminishes the sexual aspects of the vampire. Having rescued Kyra from walking down the middle of Route 68, Mike quickly becomes friends with both Kyra and Mattie. To Arnies late 1970s-style imagination, the Plymouth Fury, in 1958 a mid-priced family car, is an American Dream. King equates Carries sexual flowering with the maturing of her telekinetic ability. Always a heavy drinker, Stephen King soon became an alcoholic, wrongly believing the alcohol helped his writing. Eliot's Metaphysical Poets, IA Richards' Concept of the Two Uses of Language. This study guide contains the following sections: This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on The monster is the American Dream as embodied in the automobile. Stephen King felt as though writing were an important aspect to his life, but that writing was not his life. He moves his family with him to the Overlook Hotel, where he expects to break a streak of bad luck and personal problems (he is an alcoholic) by writing a play. Led by horror writer Bill Denborough (partly based on Kings friend and collaborator Peter Straub), they defeat It once more, individually as a sort of allegory of psychoanalysis and collectively as a rite of passage into adulthood and community. In 2010, Scribner republished the memoir as a 10th anniversary edition, which also featured an updated reading list from King. King uses the mythology of vampires to ask how civilization is to exist without faith in traditional authority symbols. The yearned-for bond of parent and child, a relationship signifying a unity of being, appears throughout his fiction. To help Mattie fight off Maxs army of high-priced lawyers, Mike uses his own considerable resources to retain a lawyer for Mattie named John Storrow, a young New Yorker unafraid to take on someone of Max Devores social stature. King is especially skillful at suggesting how small-town conservatism can become inverted on itself, the harbored suspicions and open secrets gradually dividing and isolating. The truth is, however, that Max wants to gain custody of Kyra and take her away to California; he will do whatever it takes to accomplish that. Drawing on the motif of the double and the form of the detective storyon Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Sophocles Oedipus Rex (c. fifth century b.c.e. At the same time, Stephen King met the woman who would be his wife. Mikes writing abilities return while he is at Sarah Laughs, but by the end of the novel he realizes it was simply to lead him to the information he needed to put Sarahs spirit to rest. The book ends in a scene from some malign fairy tale as that child and alter ego is borne away by flocks of sparrows to make a last appearance as a black hole in the fabric of the sky. As Jack metamorphoses from abusive father and husband into violent monster, King brilliantly expands the haunted-house archetype into a symbol of the accumulated sin of all fathers. Louis succumbs to temptation when the family cat, Church, is killed on the highway; he buries him on the sacred old Native American burial grounds. One, he is sure, is Jo, and one, he determines, is Sarah Tidwell. The child and the man share a navet, a gothic iconography, and a belief in evil. Its our body. The fairy-tale subtext is the magic kingdom of our protracted American childhood, the Disney empire as mass cultureand, by implication, the comparable multimedia phenomenon represented by King himself. We went on playing for a long time, almost feverishly. The immortality she offers, howeverand by implication, the American Dreamis really arrested development in the form of a Happy Days rerun and by way of her radio, which sticks on the golden oldies station. An automotive godmother, she brings Arnie, in fairy-tale succession, freedom, success, power, and love: a home away from overprotective parents, a cure for acne, hit-andrun revenge on bullies, and a beautiful girl, Leigh Cabot. Source: Notable American Novelists Revised Edition Volume 1 James Agee Ernest J. Gaines Edited by Carl Rollyson Salem Press, Inc 2008. Kings other innovation was, paradoxically, a reiteration. Long live the King hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen Kings On Writing. In a bloody sceneeven by Kings standardsJessie frees herself and escapes, a victory psychological as well as physical. (At one point, Mears holds off a vampire with a crucifix made with two tongue depressors.) Misery, which was conceived as Bachmans book, was Kings first novel to explore the subject of fictions dangerous powers. Jos notes explain how everyone related to the people who murdered Sarah Tidwell and her son have paid for this sin by losing a child of their own. Obsession was a As in most folk cultures, initiation is signified by the acquisition of special wisdom or powers. This novel turned into Carrie, Stephen King's first published novel. [9], On Writing is divided into five sections, each with a different focus. Riding on the success of his first published novels, Stephen King threw all his creative energy into writing. From the beginning, his dark parables spoke to the anxieties of the late twentieth century. The turning point is the death of Gage, which Creed cannot accept and that leads to the novels analysis of modern medical miracles performed in the name of human decency and love. King urges the reader to take writing and his advice seriously. The paraphernalia, they find, will work only if the handler has faith. Originally published in 2000 by Charles Scribner's Sons, On Writing is King's first book after he was involved in a car accident a year earlier. Stephen King continued his advice by describing the process in which he uses to write his own novels. Stephen King says in On Writing, "When a simile or metaphor doesn't work, the result are sometimes funny and sometimes embarrassing." Home American Literature Analysis of Stephen Kings Novels, By Nasrullah Mambrol on December 31, 2018 ( 3 ), Stephen King (born. The characters have the trusted two-dimensional reality of kitsch: They originate in clichs such as the high school nerd or the wise child. On the other hand, Eberhart praised On Writing's discussion of King's personal life, stating that "King's writing about his own alcoholism and cocaine abuse is among the best and most honest prose of his career." Louiss wizardry is reflected in the narrative perspective and structure, which flashes back in part 2 from the funeral to Louiss fantasy of a heroically long, flying tackle that snatches Gage from deaths wheels. After Its extensive exploration of childhood, however, he took up conspicuously more mature characters, themes, and roles. He is also an abused child who, assuming his fathers aggression, in turn becomes the abusing father. In June 1999, King reread the uncompleted draft and became determined to finish it. Categories: American Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Literature, Popular Culture, Tags: Analysis of Stephen King's Novels, Salems Lot, Bag of Bones, Bag of Bones Analysis, Bag of Bones Novel, Dolores Claiborne, Essays on Stephen King's Novels, Geralds Game, Insomnia, It, It Novel, Jessie Burlingame, King and Bachman, King and Bachman Novel, King and Bachman Novel Analysis, King and Bachman Novel Essay, King and Bachman Novel Theme, Louis Creed, Misery, Misery Novel, Needful Things, Norma Crandall, Oz the Gweat, Pet Sematary, Richard Bachman, Rose Madder, Sleeping Beauties, Stephen King, Stephen King Best Selling Novels, Stephen King's Novels, Summary of Stephen King's Novels, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, The Dark Half, The Dark Half Novel, The Dark Half Novel Analysis, The Dark Half Novel Essay, The Dark Half Novel Summary, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Tommyknockers, Themes of Stephen King's Novels, Thinner. Hence, the vampire Barlow is the devouring father who consumes an entire town. Additionally the sematary, whose Druidic rings allude to Stonehenge, is the outer circle of a Native American burial ground that sends back the dead in a state of soulless half life. Christine recovers for Arnie a prelapsarian vitality and manifest destiny. Invented for business reasons, Bachman soon grew into an identity complete with a biography and photographs (he was a chicken farmer with a cancer-ravaged face), dedications, a narrative voice (of unrelenting pessimism), and if not a genre, a naturalistic mode in which sociopolitical speculation combined or alternated with psychological suspense. However, Woo also observed that "many other books about writing offer such advice and some are more inspirational and ambitious," noting how "King cannot replicate a formula for his success so he does the next best thing by describing his work habits and environment urging that consistency in those areas can be conducive to good writing. In this instance, his blunt literalness (word become flesh, so to speak, as George Stark puts it), gives vitality to what in other hands might have been a sterile exercise. In fact, all of Dolores Claiborne is her first-person narrative, without even chapter breaks, a tour de force few would attempt. The novel also indicts the waste land of mass culture, alluding in the same trope to George Romeros stupid, lurching movie-zombies, T. S. Eliots poem about the hollow men, and The Wizard of Oz: headpiece full of straw. Louis worries that Ellie knows more about Ronald McDonald and the Burger King than the spiritus mundi. If the novel suggests one source of community and culture, it is the form and ritual of the childrens pet sematary. Its concentric circles form a pattern from their own collective unconsciousness, one that mimes the most ancient religious symbol of all, the spiral. The aptly named Dolores Claiborne is trapped more metaphorically, by poverty and an abusive husband, and her victory too is both violent and a sign of her developing independence and strength. In an interview with NBC, King stated, "After the accident, I was totally incapable of writing. Childrens literature: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Pop-up Book, 2004 (text adaptation by Peter Abrahams, illustrated by Alan Dingman). Stephen Kings first published novel, Carrie, is a parable of adolescence. I want grownups to look at the child long enough to be able to give him up. Dolores Claiborne is especially successful, her speech authentic Mainer, and her character realistic both as the old woman telling her story and as the desperate yet indomitable wife, the past self whose story she tells. During the 1990s, King continued to develop as a writer of both supernatural horror and mimetic character-based fiction. Arnie and his parents are buried, Christine is scrap metal, and the true Americans, Leigh and Dennis, are survivors, but Dennis, the knight of Darnells GaRage, does not woo the lady fair; he is a limping, lackluster junior high teacher, and they have drifted apart, grown old in their prime. Because Mike is unable to father children, he begins to question whether Jo was having an affair. Although the first section, titled "C.V." narrates his life, King states that the section is not an autobiography, but more a curriculum vitae, owing to the sporadic nature of his memories. He admits that not even The King himself always sticks to his rulesbut trying to follow them is a As Mike is drawn into Matties custody battle, he is also exposed to the ghosts that haunt the community. In Danse Macabre, a study of the contemporary horror genre that emphasizes the cross-pollination of fiction and film, he divides his subject according to four monster archetypes: the ghost, the thing (or human-made monster), the vampire, and the werewolf. Both present a strong but besieged female protagonist, and both feature the total solar eclipse seen in Maine in 1963, during which a moment of telepathy, the books only supernaturalism, links the two women. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a memoir by American author Stephen King that describes his experiences as a writer and his advice for aspiring writers. King represents that oral tradition in a pseudodocumentary form that depicts the points of view of various witnessess and commentaries: newspaper accounts, case studies, court reports, and journals. (King uses mythology and gender issues more explicitly in Rose Madder, which evenly incorporates mimetic and supernatural scenes.). From such premises, they move cinematically through an atmosphere resonant with a popular mythology. [5]:103107 The third section, "Toolbox", discusses English mechanics and the importance of vocabulary, grammar, and style in writing. In Christine, the setting is Libertyville, Pennsylvania, during the late 1970s. The story won the On Writing competition. The weakness or treachery of a trusted parent is correspondingly the ultimate fear. Soon, however, the familiar triangle emerges, of boy, girl, and car, and Christine is revealed as a femme fatale driven by the spirit of her former owner, a malcontent named Roland LeBay. Christine is another fractured Cinderella story, Carrie for boys. His major innovation, however, was envisioning the mythic small town in American gothic terms and then making it the monster; the vampires traditional victim, the populace, becomes the menace as mindless mass, plague, or primal horde. Archetypal themes also strengthen the two books: Female power must overcome male dominance, as the moon eclipses the sun; and each woman must find her own identity and strength out of travail, as the darkness gives way to light again. "[5]:269 On Writing was the first book King published following his accident. The two survivors, Ben Mears and Mark Petrie, must partly seek, partly create their talismans and rituals, drawing on the compendium of vampire lorethe alternative, in a culture-wide crisis of faith, to conventional systems. However, Stephen King cautions against actively increasing a writer's vocabulary, claiming that being honest would be better than sounding intelligent. Both are relatively young, and Jo, Mike learns, was pregnant. Along the way, Stephen King also added cocaine to his addictions. The use of the word "like" is a major clue that this is a simile. Annies obsession merges with the expectations of the page-turning real reader, who demands and devours each chapter, and as Sheldon struggles (against pain, painkillers, and a manual typewriter that throws keys) for his life, page by page. Kings fictions begin with premises accepted by middle Americans of the television generation, opening in suburban or small-town AmericaDerry, Maine, or Libertyville, Pennsylvaniaand have the familiarity of the house next door and the 7-Eleven store. Alone and helpless, Jessie confronts memories (including the secret reason she struck out at Gerald), her own fears and limitations, and a ghastly visitor to the cabin who may or may not be real. Kings reversal of the happy ending is actually in keeping with the Brothers Grimm; it recalls the tales folk originals, which enact revenge in bloody images: The stepsisters heels, hands, and noses are sliced off, and a white dove pecks out their eyes. Her mother, a religious fanatic, associates Carrie with her own sin; Carries peers hate her in a mindless way and make her the butt of every joke. These styles are developed by having a passion for writing and personal experiences encountered by the author. As King knows, blood flows freely in the oral tradition. After completing the "C.V." and "Toolbox" sections, King set aside the manuscript in February or March 1998, explaining in the final section of On Writing that he was uncertain how or whether he should proceed with the book. On Writing is part biography and part how-to. Sixteen-year-old Carrie White is a lonely ugly duckling, an outcast at home and at school. This Study Guide consists of approximately 30pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - The novel, moreover, shares much with the southern novel and its themes. The usual King trademarks that fans have come to expect are present in Bag of Bones. This reality, already mediated, is translated easily into preternatural terms, taking on a nightmarish quality. "[4], "The New Classics: Books: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008", "King admits difficulties since accident", "Stephen King: The 'Craft' Of Writing Horror Stories", "He's only working at half of his usual dizzying pace", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=On_Writing:_A_Memoir_of_the_Craft&oldid=981296674, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 1 October 2020, at 13:18. Stephen King writes about his childhood and young adulthood, relating stories that made him the writer he has become. Stephen King and his family moved frequently in his early years in order to be closer to family members. The sociopolitical subtext of Salems Lot was the ubiquitous disillusionment of the Watergate era, King has explained. Mike dissolves Sarahs body with lye and her spirit finally leaves Sarah Laughs. On Writing Stephen King Analysis 1619 Words | 7 Pages. The larger philosophical issue is Louiss rational, bioethical creed; he believes in saving the only life he knows, the material. Dennis narrates the story in order to file it away, all the while perceiving himself and his peers in terms of icons from the late 1950s. The novel, which King once considered too horrible to be published, is also his own dark night of the soul. The failure of Louiss creed is shown in his habit, when under stress, of taking mental trips to Orlando, Florida, where he, Church, and Gage drive a white van as Disney Worlds resurrection crew. In these waking dreams, which echo the male bond of wise child and haunted father from as far back as Salems Lot, Louiss real creed is revealed: Its focus is on Oz the Gweat and Tewwible (a personification of death to Rachel) and Walt Disney, that gentle faker from Nebraskalike Louis, two wizards of science fantasy. Even Susan Norton, Mearss lover and the gothic heroine, succumbs. Criticizing King's recommendations on writing, Eberhart remarked that they were "so pedestrian that I can't remember when I first ran across any of them." everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of On Writing. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. Louis is the father as baby boomer who cannot relinquish his childhood. As in The Shining, The Dead Zone, and Firestarter, the child (or childlike adult) has powers that may be used for good or for evil. Kings manual On Writing reveals that hes relentlessly dedicated to his craft. Nearly thirty years later, Beaumont is a creative writing professor and moderately successful literary novelist devoted to his family. Even a zombie lurching through the night is a cheerful thought in the context of a dissolving ozone layer.. Twenty-seven years after its original reign of terror, It resumes its seige, whereupon the protagonists, now professionally successful and, significantly, childless yuppies, must return to Derry to confront as adults their childhood fears. However, successful writing is dependent on unique styles possessed by the author. After crashing his car on an isolated road in Colorado, romance writer Paul Sheldon is rescued, drugged, and held prisoner by a psychotic nurse named Annie Wilkes, who is also the Number One Fan of his heroine Misery Chastain (of whom he has tired and killed off). Eventually the situation became so difficult that Tabitha King gave her husband an ultimatum. In The Shining, King domesticated his approach to the theme of parent-child relationships, focusing on the threat to the family that comes from a trusted figure within it. Stephen King then recommended putting the finished novel into a drawer for no less than six weeks in order to get some distance. The epilogue from four years later presents the fairy-tale consolation in a burnedout monotone. Financially invulnerable, King became almost playful with publishing gambits: The Green Mile was a serial, six slim paperbacks, in emulation of Charles Dickens and as a self-set challenge; Richard Bachman was revived when The Regulators was published in 1996. Mini-Essay 1 The nonfiction piece, On Writing, by Stephen King, that is often told in a form that mirrors many fiction stories. In Bag of Bones, King references several of his other novels, most notably The Dark Half, Needful Things, and Insomnia. As Douglas Winter explains, Christine reenacts the death, during the 1970s, of the American romance with the automobile.. Get On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft from Amazon.com. Pretending to textual authenticity, he alludes to the gothic classics, especially Bram Stokers Dracula (1897). While working hard to provide for his family, Stephen King would continue to work on his own stories and novels, a few magazine publications helping to keep his growing family afloat. In 1958, the seven protagonists, a cross-section of losers, experience the monster differently, for as in George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), It derives its power through its victims isolation and guilt and thus assumes the shape of his or her worst fear. The last half is psychological suspense and metafiction in biological metaphor: the struggle of the decently introspective Beaumont against the rawly instinctual Stark for control of both word and flesh, with the novel taking shape on the page as the true author reclaims the third eye, Kings term for both childs and artists inward vision. In dramatizing the tyrannies, perils, powers, and pleasures of reading and writing, Misery and The Dark Half might have been written by metafictionists John Fowles (to whose work King is fond of alluding) or John Barth (on whom he draws directly in It and Misery). Arnie Cunningham, a nearsighted, acne-scarred loser, falls in love with a car, a passionate (red and white) Plymouth Fury, one of the long ones with the big fins, that he names Christine.