Stephen King on Vietnam

Stephen King on Vietnam

In his novel Hearts of Atlantis, Stephen King tackles the subject of the Vietnam War. Okay—to say the book was strange in the same breath as Stephen King is redundant, but this was strange more in the manner of the book’s presentation than its content. Written in five parts, each focusing on one character, the first part introduces an eleven-year-old boy in 1960 who befriends a new neighbor, an older man who introduces him to more adult literature such as The Lord of the Flies and is a being from a different dimension running from still other beings. King does a wonderful job of portraying a young boy coming to grips with the more adult concepts of parental fallibility and forgiveness.

The second part switches to a college freshman dorm filled with foul-mouthed males—sexes were kept separate in the sixties. It also switched from third person (he did, he said) to first person (I did, I said), the story told by a boy who had nothing to do with the beginning of the story. Moving to 1966, the abrupt change threw me, and it took a while to get back into the story. Most of the boys attended college to avoid the Vietnam War, more from a personal standpoint than in objection to being in Vietnam.

The Innocence of the Fifties Dies

The freshmen are introduced to the peace sign, demonstrations, and clashes between those who opposed the war and authority figures. The next two parts went back to third person and focused on two vets, both from the first part, one who used his war injury to beg and give the money to those in need to make amends for taking part in violence against a little girl from the first part of the story. The other vet was a friend of the girl in the first part and the boy who was the focus of that story.

The last part went back to the boy from the beginning and brought the events full circle. Stephen King relates the era to the fall of Atlantis, a time when great changes could have been brought about but people missed the boat and ended with a generation dying of booze, drugs, depression or Agent Orange. I didn’t understand all the references. The sixties were a bit before my reaching the age of reason. The aliens in the first part were unnecessary—the point could easily have been made with regular people—and seemed like an ad for his series The Dark Tower, which I couldn’t get interested in. Otherwise, the dangers of allowing oneself to get sucked into a mob mentality or following authority’s dictates when the policies make no sense come across clearly. Not such a bad allegory for today’s politics.