Author's note: As I devour Stephen King's latest novel, I wanted to model a prediction piece.
Any novel in which the main character travels time is inherently unrealistic. Add the author Stephen King, and you can bet you're reading an irony -- an irony titled 11/22/63.
Sure this unrealistic story is not a romance? Definitely. When main character Jake Epping first travels through the "rabbithole" and into 1958, he innocently drinks a root beer and returns within minutes. His second trip is not quite as innocuous; Epping finds himself in the path of a sledgehammer-wielding homicidal maniac in the town of Derry, Maine -- a legendary town for fans of King that needs no further introduction to induce nightmarish visions. Epping survives this second trip...and then returns for a third.
Now, I can guarantee that Epping will not "get the girl, the gold watch" and a happy ending. Aside from the fact that ironies never end well -- and the overwhelming evidence of King's stack of twisted, unhappy endings -- the theme of time travel rarely wraps up all loose ends with a pretty little bow.
Take, for example, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife: a couple in love who are constantly torn apart by the husband's unfortunate propensity to disappear through time at any given moment and reappear, naked, all over parts of Chicago. Obviously, this relationship was not going to last the test of time.
Jack Finney's novel Time And Again covers another time-travel disaster as the main character attempts to stop the Titanic from sinking. After a discussion on the ill-fated ship about the ethics of changing the past, the main character does indeed cause the path of the Titanic to change...and because of this new path, the ship does indeed hit the iceberg.
Much like changing the sinking of the Titanic, King's Jake Epping is attempting the stop the assassination of JFK. Yet, Epping is learning that "the past is obdurate," and it doesn't want to be changed. If Epping does succeed, I still don't see him returning to 2011 and celebrating a peaceful world. Based on the plotline of an irony and the similar tales of time travel disasters, I can only imagine that Epping's actions in 1963 will cause a ripple effect that damages -- if not completely destroys -- our world instead of saving it.
The reason this scores a 10 is because the LA teacher wrote it! Seriously, though, it scores a 10 for predictions because it uses accurate text evidence and compares at least two other texts.
ReplyDeleteI think you need a more exciting intro.
ReplyDeleteIt scores a 10 because it clearly states what she is talking about and she gives her opinion about what she thinks is going to happen, and supports it with logical explanations.
ReplyDeleteI think that this scores a ten because it lays out what you think is going to happen really well. I also think that it lays out what happens in the other texts without creating a full blown summary.
ReplyDeleteP.S: This is way better than I could have done!