Stephen King

Stephen King in a promotional photo shoot (http://www.stephenkingshop.com/imagegallery.htm)

What is a hero? When I read the book The Heroes Trailby T.A. Barron, I found out that there are different kinds of heroes. At first, I thought there’s only one kind of hero, and that is somebody who has done something great for the others or for their country. It never occurred to me that a hero could be someone who believed to themselves and tried their best to continue what they loved to do. This kind of hero is mentioned in the book by T.A. Barron. I was pretty amazed of what these people go through just to do what they’re willing to do. It takes a great amount of faith to be able to do what you want when you‘re sick or when you had an accident. One person that comes to my mind when I think of this kind of hero is Stephen King.

Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine. He is the second son of Donald and Ruth King, and his brother’s name is David. One night, their father, Donald, told the family that he was just going out to buy some cigarettes and after that, they never heard from him again. Stephen was raised by his mother and they moved to a lot of town until they finally settled in Durham, Maine.

You might know Stephen King as the famous horror story writer. He was always been interested in writing horror stories. In fact, Stephen wrote his first horror story when he was seven years old. King began to seriously write when he and his brother, David, decided to publish their own local newspaper called Dave’s Rag. In 1966 King graduated from Lisbon High School. He also took the scholarship to go to the University of Maine. Later that year, he began working on a novel called “Getting it On”, but then he was rejected when he submitted it BennetCerf/Random House for publication. In June 1970, Stephen graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science degree in English. At this time, Stephen is running out of money and all he wanted to do was to write and publish his books. Stephen King decided to sell his writings to a men’s magazine and then started to begin earning some money. In January 2, 1971, Stephen King married Tabitha Jane Spruce, and in the fall of that year, he had a teaching job at Hampden Academy. After that, King started to work on a story about a girl called Carrieta White. When his wife read the other pages that Stephen finished, she encouraged Stephen to finish the whole book. In January 1973, Stephen submitted his story shortly called “Carrie” to Doubleday, which is a publication company. After more horror books published, and sold over the years around the world, Stephen King is known as the “Master of Horror”. He made a whole lot of difference in sharing and writing his horror books. His books and his stories really go inside your imagination, making it as if it is real. It clearly makes you feel that you’re inside the book and included in the story. It’s like escaping to another world when you read one of his books.

Stephen King is related to one of the heroes discussed in T.A. Barron’s book, which is A Hero Within. In June 1999, Stephen almost died in an accident when he was hit by a van while walking on the side of the road in Bangor, Maine. The accident left him with broken legs, broken ribs, injuries to his lungs and a very fractured hip. Stephen has to spend a lot of times in the medical center and the rehabilitation center to be able to walk again and to be cured. Even though the accident left him with serious injuries, it didn’t stop him from writing more books, because of this, I would consider him as a Hero Within. Stephen has a lot of hope inside himself. He knew that all he wanted to do is to write and he’s not going to let some accident ruin one of his dreams. He fought the pain that he has to go through to be able to do what he wanted to do and be back to normal again. He also has a lot of faith in himself and believed that he could do this and go through his surgeries. Half a dozen surgeries later, Stephen is as good as new.

After all the pains and hardships he’s gone through, Stephen announced in 2002, that he would retire from writing and would not publish a book again. Even though he retired and stopped publishing books, he still made a huge impact in horror writing. I’m pretty sure that he scared a lot of people who read his books and watched the movie version of some of his books. I’m pretty sure that his books will never be forgotten. There are still a lot of generations of kids or adults who can read his book and can experience the power of the “Master of Horror”.