Thoughts on Stephen King's "The Body" short story

Fall from Innocence: "The Body" is part of Stephen King's 1982 short story collection "Different Seasons"

Let's keep this blog rolling. I used a few spare minutes this afternoon to finish Stephen King's "The Body" short story which I started already two or three weeks ago. It's not particularly long, remind yourself, it's a short story, I've just been quite busy with finishing up my MA thesis. But that is not part of this realm.

"The Body" focusses on a group of four twelve, thirteen year olds: Gordie, Vern, Chris and Teddy. Due to some circumstances they learn about where to find the corpse of a missing child, Ray Browers. As they live in a small town in some American rural area "the body" is located deep in a seemingly endless forest area. The story, which is told by an adult narrator (a writer, surprise) reminding himself about this unusual event in his childhood, then is all about the adventures the group experiences on their way to their goal: dangerous guard dogs, walking train bridges, sleeping a night in a forest far from civilization for example. The journey becomes a kind of rite de passage as they leave their childhood behind, face off their fears and eventually make enemies with some older bullies.

I found this to be a nice little short story, not too remindable though. Compared with "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" or "An apt pupil"in the same collection it lacks characters that live on in your mind for long. At least that was my impression as I always found myself wondering "who's who again?". But I liked the "let's go and explore" spin that it had, which reminded me a little of the wonderful inside story of "A Wind through the Key Hole".

Next, and last, short story in this volume is "The Breathing Method". Let's see what that is about.