Survivor Type

Content Warning: This section of the guide makes reference to shipwreck, accidental injury and death, violence, childhood bullying, self-amputation, self-harm, autocannibalism, illegal drug use, hunting, the visualization of torture, psychological distress, hallucination, and racist attitudes including racial slurs.

“Survivor Type” takes place on a small barren island composed of only rock and lacking vegetation or animals, besides the occasional seagull or crab. As the main character remains marooned there with heroin, matches, and water as his only supplies, the story uses isolation and the will to survive as the focal point and the driving force of the narrative. The opening setting and premise recall traditional survivor narratives that the story increasingly subverts to create dread and horror. The Instinct to Survive is one of the most important themes of the story, around which the plot is constructed, closely connected to Justification and Revelation Through Self-Narration. The diary, where Pine is recording his memories of the past, becomes a companion and an instrument of confession, as he reveals details about his life before the crash of the cruise ship Callas. Pine’s disclosures involve Racism as Hatred of the Self and Others as part of the story’s challenging presentation of his character and attitude to humanity.

The story is shaped by three layers of narrative: the framing present action of Pine’s diary writing; the past event that he recounts; and the relationship between them as the reader parses the meaning of Pine’s self-narration. Pine’s lack of self-awareness or moral responsibility is expressed through this structure, as he both obfuscates and incriminates himself with his tale. The story’s “inciting” incident (the event that causes subsequent events of the story) happens outside of the frame story, and the audience learns about it through Pine’s flashbacks. He relates how he lost his medical license, causing him to decide to participate in the drug smuggling operation, which eventually leads him to become stranded on the island. The loss of the license can be interpreted as the inciting incident that puts into action the events of the storyline. The complexity of the story’s non-chronological structure breaks this line of cause and effect, in the same way that Pine’s self-justifying perspective seeks to hide from the consequences of his actions. At no point does Pine perceive that his past criminal behavior has led to the isolation of his present.

The narrative tension of the story rises as Pine struggles to survive and as the audience gains further insight into his personality and backstory through his flashbacks. This tension is partly supplied by the dual time structure of the story. The flashbacks supply contextual, mundane information about Pine for the reader, while the present-time sections detail his increasing decline and the horror of his circumstances and decisions. The interpolation of these two types of passages encourages the reader to draw parallels between Pine’s present and past behaviors and decisions. Gradually, the story focuses on Pine’s present, allowing the graphic horror of his self-mutilation and autocannibalism to take center stage.

The narrative comes to a climax when Pine deliberately removes his second foot in order to eat it. Although the sequence of his thinking is traced, this is a transgressive departure from the medical amputation of the first foot and related autocannibalism, which was presented as a pragmatic decision. From this point on, Pine’s strategy for survival becomes a method of self-destruction, signaling the expectation that his psychological and physical condition with deteriorate further. Following this incident, the language of the entries becomes increasingly disordered, signifying Pine’s physical and emotional state.

Pine’s eventual mutilation of his own hands creates a deeply unsettling conclusion. Conjuring a graphic horror image, the story’s last act of self-harm encapsulates the equivalence of survival and self-destruction in Pine’s behavior. It seems clear that, without hands, Pine is likely to die, but also that, as his hands are the tools of his self-mutilation, this may now be stopped. Pine’s hands are also symbolic of his self-identity. Throughout the story, Pine makes a great effort to take care of his hands, as they are not only his primary tool for survival but also a remnant of his previous life as a surgeon. Pine’s destruction of his hands is thus symbolic of his psychological decline, as well as a result of that decline.

The denouement is intentionally ambiguous, as the author does not indicate whether Pine dies. However, at the beginning of the narrative, the main character asserts: “This is my diary. If I’m found (when), I can destroy this easily enough” (399). The story thus challenges the reader to consider their own role, how the diary has come to be found, and how this relates to Pine’s potential survival. The question of whether the diary’s existence means Pine was rescued is unanswered but it is clear that Pine didn’t intend for his confessions to be read. On this level, the reader is drawn into transgressional behavior, reading the deeply private journal of a man in crisis. This is part of the story’s exploration of moral responsibility and of horror. King encourages the reader to engage with the darkness of human nature and to ask why this darkness is so compelling.

Another prominent literary technique in “Survivor Type” is diction, or the author’s choice of vocabulary. The author’s diction is used to add a realistic quality to the storyline, to enhance depth and credibility to the main character, and to immerse the reader into the narrative. King uses colloquialisms, repetitions, and grammatical errors to suspend the audience’s disbelief. Colloquialism, or the use of informal spoken language in writing, conveys Pine’s Italian American heritage and makes him a more believable character. Throughout the story, Pine employs not only words typical of Italian American vernacular such as “greaseball” (399) but also multiple curse words. The use of a vernacular type of speech in difficult situations makes Pine more relatable to the reader but sometimes draws attention to the narrative as a construct, such as the frequent repetition of the informal interjection “ha-ha” throughout the story. It is used sarcastically when Pine is describing a predicament, such as the lack of food: “I’ll use [the knives] when I eat my supper tonight. Roast rock. Ha-ha” (401). The artificiality of “ha-ha” breaks into the stream of words and reminds the reader that the narrative is a self-consciously written text. This also serves to highlight the unreliability of Pine as narrator.