Stephen King is one of my favorite faaaavvooorrriiitteeee authors, in fact, what got me back into reading, and reading the way I’ve been reading this year, is owed 100% to his boo The Institute. I read it in a matter of hours and remembered how much I loved reading. Just how much had been missing from my life.
This short story, because there’s no real way you can call it a full length book, is just phenomenal, it captures soemthing, an ethos maybe? Of what it means to be a teenager. But while reading this I also realized that we never really grow up from being a teen, sure we may “grow up” get a good job, a good degree, have kids, but honestly there’s still a big part of us that is that teen.
This book is kind of like Lord of the Flies, but not. There’s an introspection to it, a moment where everyone lets down their mask. Everyone.
The violence in the book, because at the end of the day it is a horror book you know, is used in such a way that reminds me of The Mist, another King book, and how it speaks on the very nature of humanity. It plays on the cliche that all that glitters isn’t gold, as we witness the fall of various characters. We get a front row seat to the unraveling of societal norms and this answers the question, What if we could say the things we’d never dare say? What if we choose not to play by the unspoken rules of living?