You Like It Darker

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Two Talented Bastids”-“Willie the Weirdo”

“Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream”-“On Slide Inn Road”

“Red Screen”-“Laurie”

“Rattlesnakes”

“The Dreamers”-“The Answer Man”

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

Reckoning With the World’s Cruelty

As the book’s title, You Like It Darker, suggests through direct address, this collection of stories investigates the darker side of human experience. Therefore, many of the stories imagine how people might reckon with the elements of chaos in the world and their lives, threatening the peaceful veneer of a well-constructed life. “The Fifth Step” introduces this dynamic of chaos and order directly, following a retired engineer named Jamieson who has settled on a routine in his new life as a widower. This routine is disrupted by the appearance of a stranger on his favorite bench. Jamieson considers skipping this part of his routine but values its regularity and predictability too much to let it go. The man, calling himself Jack, offers to return his bench to him if he listens to Jack’s story. Jamieson accepts, agreeing to help Jack through his journey of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. However, he discovers something more sinister about his new acquaintance. Jack reveals that he also craves violence, and the implication is that while he might be giving up his reliance on alcohol, his desire to hurt and kill others will continue unaddressed. Jamieson’s attachment to his bench is thus tainted by the knowledge that Jack can return there anytime.

“Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” follows a high school custodian and the forces that harass him. This story uses irony in several ways to highlight the world’s chaotic and cruel nature. Coughlin reports the information from his dream because he believes it’s the right thing to do. The investigator Jalbert punishes this motivation by pinning the murder of Yvonne Wicker on Coughlin, convinced that he’s guilty before evidence can prove him innocent. Jalbert’s actions expel Coughlin from his job and community, forcing him to consider moving to another state. Coughlin begins to wonder if his waking life is worse than his dream. He may have done the right thing, but he wishes he had never been given the responsibility of doing it.

In the story “On Slide Inn Road,” a family crosses paths with two thugs during a road trip. While the thugs explicitly threaten them, the family also experiences cruelty within itself. The trip’s purpose is to visit the grandfather’s dying sister, and the grandfather, Donald, tries to be helpful by offering his car and his knowledge of shortcuts. However, Donald’s son and daughter-in-law, Frank and Corinne, openly resent his efforts and presence. Frank is particularly averse to his father’s advice, though at the story’s end, Corinne’s sympathies shift in Donald’s favor. This resonates with another story in the collection, “Willie the Weirdo,” in which Willie and his grandfather, James, are ostracized by their family in different ways, which brings them together, allowing them to maintain a unique relationship until the moment of James’s death. This last example suggests that people can still rely on the company of others for comfort in a cruel world. Willie ignores his family’s perception of James because he finds comfort in his grandfather’s company. Similarly, Coughlin’s young friend, Darla Jean, speaks up against the trailer park’s decision to expel him because she knows Danny could never harm anyone. This affirms his decision to do the right thing. Leaning on others for comfort inspires people to be kind despite the worst outcomes.

Bad Luck as Destiny

While cruelty drives many antagonistic relationships in this collection and much of King’s other work, he also suggests that some people seem destined to experience misfortune. This has always been a prevailing theme in King’s work but is especially evident in You Like It Darker, serving as the premise for one story: The title character of “Finn” has bad luck from the moment he’s born. He’s repeatedly injured throughout his childhood, which does nothing to prepare him for his sudden, unexpected kidnapping. His being mistaken for someone else because they’re wearing the same clothes warrants skepticism. Nevertheless, Finn believes that his bad luck is much more to blame for his kidnapping and poor treatment than the kidnapper Ludlum’s sadistic nature. He holds onto his grandmother’s axiom that God owes him good luck for every stroke of bad luck he experiences. When he’s later freed by rogue gang members who happen to be disgruntled with Ludlum’s actions in general, it affirms the idea that Finn’s luck is to blame for all the circumstances he’s lived through, including his liberation.

“Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” and “On Slide Inn Road” similarly support this theme. The protagonists at the center of these stories encounter antagonists without rhyme or reason. Though Danny did what he felt was right, he still wonders why he was chosen to dream about the location of Yvonne Wicker’s body. He wishes he never had the dream, but this implies that the burden could have fallen on anyone else. He was just unlucky enough to have it. Likewise, “On Slide Inn Road” leads the Brown family to cross paths with the treacherous characters Galen and Pete, which they never could have anticipated. This unexpected encounter resonates with their understandable lack of foresight in taking the Slide Inn Road shortcut: Nothing at the turn off the highway could have warned them of what lay ahead.

“The Answer Man” hints at a resolution to this theme by following one man throughout most of his life. Through his encounters with the Answer Man, Phil comes to believe that some unseen guiding force has written out his life. He can’t ask the Answer Man questions about what he should do, so he asks questions only about what the Answer Man can guarantee will happen. This works to Phil’s advantage the first time he meets the Answer Man but not the second. After the death of his son and his wife, Phil expresses anger, demanding to see the Answer Man again. He wants clarity and closure, but he doesn’t get it. Instead, he devotes the rest of his life to making his own luck, working toward a future whose answers he doesn’t know. This resonates with the ending of “Finn,” in which the newly freed protagonist celebrates his liberation by mimicking an activity he loved to do as a child, climbing a slide. A woman warns him of the danger of doing so, but Finn doesn’t seem to care. His behavior acknowledges his bad fortune as a given and defies it by living according to his own rules. Finn and Phil make what they can of their bad fortune rather than succumb to it.

Dealing With the Consequences of Death

Because cruelty and misfortune are among the larger forces that dictate the shared world of King’s stories, one might see each character’s emotional journey as a reckoning with mortality. Death reveals truths that some people are uncomfortable with while creating opportunities for others to move forward. “Two Talented Bastids” is told from the perspective of Mark Carmody, who has always lived in the shadow of his father, Laird. Mark doesn’t reveal until the story’s end that he always harbored an ambition to follow in Laird’s footsteps and become a fiction writer. This suggests that his interest in Laird’s talent is self-serving: He wants to learn how Laird figured out his craft and became successful so that he can learn to do the same. After Laird dies, however, Mark learns that his father’s talent may literally have come from powers beyond the earth. He can’t hope to replicate his father’s skill unless he has the luck to encounter aliens of his own, which he confirms by making the journey to Laird’s hunting cabin so that he can use his father’s alien device for himself and finding that it doesn’t work for him. Laird’s death is also the death of Mark’s ambitions. Mark ends the story in a state of resigned acceptance because he realizes that his ambition doesn’t define his life. He thus moves on from his father’s shadow.

“The Turbulence Expert” focuses on the idea that the fear of death can enable one to do something meaningful in the world. Before the story reveals the true nature of Craig’s work, it conveys that this work makes him deeply uncomfortable. When he reveals what he does to Mary Worth, Craig explains that his fear and discomfort are the essential ingredients for saving lives. However, Craig hints at the emotional burden this puts on him. While he knows he’s helping others by doing his job, he’s putting his own mental and emotional health at risk. He recruits Mary Worth partly because he knows it will bring him closer to retirement, ending the burden he endures to save others. One might sense that at the end of Craig’s employment, he’ll have the remainder of his life to reconsider how he might welcome death, considering that he has confronted it for most of his adult life.

“Laurie” and “Rattlesnakes” offer two possible ways of dealing with grief as a consequence of death. In “Laurie,” Lloyd Sunderland fears forming a new attachment to Laurie because he doesn’t want an attachment that might break his heart like it did when his wife, Marian, died. His time with Laurie, however, reminds him that life is bigger than his relationship with his wife and that though he misses that relationship, caring for the dog helps him turn his life around. “Rattlesnakes” approaches similar ideas from the opposite direction, showing what happens when one becomes trapped by grief for an extended time. Vic Trenton finds it difficult to reckon with the loss of his wife, Donna, because it was his only coping mechanism for dealing with the death of their son, Tad. However, when the ghosts of Allie Bell’s sons become attached to Vic, he realizes how poisonous grief can be. These ghosts refuse to let go of the living world just as Vic has refused to let go of his grief. The only way he can resolve their attachment is to move forward with his life.