36 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KingChildren of the Corn
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Corn
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to graphic violence, death, horror themes, and religious fanaticism.
The vast titular cornfields stand as a multifaceted symbol representing both sustenance and malevolence. Initially evoking images of abundance and rural tranquility, the cornfields become a sinister backdrop for the unfolding horror. The rustling stalks and towering plants conceal the children’s rituals and the supernatural entity, He Who Walks Behind the Rows. The cornfields also symbolize the inherently deceptive atmosphere of Gatlin: a trap for everyone who enters.
Where rural farming towns with abundant harvests are often seen as symbols of wholesome American success, the town of Gatlin subverts this stereotype by presenting a poisonous illusion of the American dream. A recurring symbol throughout the story, the corn appears in the abandoned church as a bizarre redecoration of a portrait of Jesus Christ, the creepy corn husk doll, and in Burt’s observations of the deserted stretch of Nebraska highway they traverse while seeking help.
The cornfields ultimately serve to intensify the atmosphere of dread, transforming a staple of rural life into a foreboding landscape where innocence is corrupted and hidden horrors lurk.
He Who Walks Behind the Rows
He Who Walks Behind the Rows is more than a mysterious supernatural entity. This figure also serves as a potent symbol of the evil that resides within the cornfields and within every human heart. King never clarifies whether the entity is real or whether it is simply a manifestation of the worst elements of humanity, but the ambiguous nature of this figure invites speculation that He Who Walks Behind the Rows may be the embodiment of the worst parts of human nature. He is described as:
[…] something huge, bulking up to the sky…something green with terrible red eyes the size of footballs. Something that smelled like dried cornhusks years in some dark barn (284).
He Who Walks Behind the Rows symbolizes the dark supernatural forces that can manipulate and corrupt the innocent. The image of “footballs” juxtaposes the nature of innocent children’s games, and this description recalls the corn doll—now presumed to be a dark icon of some kind—another traditional child’s toy resonant of American wholesomeness.
A mysterious force implied to be residing within the cornfields, He Who Walks Behind the Rows embodies the Fear of the Unknown. Its very name suggests a malevolent yet fundamentally unknowable presence, and the force of its influence allegedly drives the children to commit heinous acts in its name. He Who Walks Behind the Rows symbolizes the corruption of faith, the seductive power of the unseen, and the primal fear associated with forces beyond human comprehension. At its core, the entity underscores the pervasive horror that emerges when the lines are blurred between innocence and evil and the natural and supernatural.
Ritualistic Sacrifices
The ritualistic sacrifices carried out by the children in Gatlin represent the perversion of religious practices. Although the gory murders of Burt and Vicky are central to the progression of the narrative, the Robesons are not the cult’s only victims. By the time Burt and Vicky’s bodies are mounted on imitation crosses deep in the cornfield, they join the skeletons of a policeman and the former pastor of Grace Baptist Church, the last two people who discovered the secret at the heart of Gatlin.
The bodies of the adolescents who are sacrificed to He Who Walks Behind the Rows are never found, but the cult’s records imply that many young men and women were offered to the entity as blood sacrifices on their 19th birthdays. This horrific pattern of violence indicates that the children’s sacrifices are escalating, becoming increasingly twisted sacraments in their worship of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.
The motif of ritualistic sacrifices represents corrupted innocence, revealing how Religious Fanaticism can lead to atrocities. The motif serves as a visceral reminder of the transformative power of belief and the horrors that can arise when organized religion is distorted to justify brutality.
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