A Review of "Cain Rose Up". Hopefully, I'm going to be able to produce these at a rate of more than once every six months; otherwise, we're all going to be cyborgs by the time this series of reviews is finished. Ah, well; so it goes. In any case, the next story on the agenda is "Cain Rose Up." A bit of background info and housekeeping first. Cain Rose Up" was published during King's sophomore year of college, in the spring 1. Ubris, the Uof. M literary journal. King actually published two stories in that issue; "Here There Be Tygers" was the second (or, depending on where each appeared within the journal, the first; I'm not sure which, so I'm using the alphabetical approach). Copies of these college- era publications are not exactly easy to come by, so I do not have them. Instead, we will be looking at the version of the story as it appeared in the 1. Skeleton Crew. It is likely that King revised the story for its inclusion in that collection, but since that's the version 9. King readers will have read, we're going to not worry about it too much.
. 'Cain Rose Up' is a very short story with a very simple premise. Next: Stephen King bibliography: Skeleton Crew part 22: The Reach. May 6. SHORT STORIES • Untitled. • Cain Rose Up (Skeleton Crew, 1985). (Stephen King's F13, 2000 & Everything's Eventual, 2002) F. My best guess would be that nobody has ever had a copy of 'Cain Rose Up' found in. King's goal in 'Cain Rose Up' seems to be to. Stephen King Books. 'Survivor Type' Author: Stephen King: Country: United States: Language: English: Genre(s) Horror short story. 'Cain Rose Up' 'Mrs. Todd's Shortcut' 'The Jaunt. Stephen King Merchandise The Message Board. The page for the Short Story Cain Rose Up. This Short Story. Synopsis; Characters; Appears In. Skeleton Crew. Stephen King: free download. Electronic library. Finding books bookzz. (ebook PDF) - Stephen King - The Shining. Stephen King - Cain Rose Up King Stephen. A list of Stephen King's Short Stories. Cain Rose Up: Skeleton Crew: June. They're Creeping Up on You: Uncollected.
'Cain Rose Up' Author: Stephen King: Country: United States: Language. The first Dollar Baby film adaptation of Cain Rose Up was shot in 1989 by Oklahoma.
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King - Cain Rose Up & Mrs. Todd's Shortcut summary and analysis. Toggle navigation. Sign Up . Print Word PDF. This section contains 810 words. Rereading Stephen King. T here's only one Stephen King novel you can't walk into your local. [Rage and a short story called Cain Rose Up].
I mention it mainly to point out that while I'll probably make certain assumptions about how King's style had progressed from 1. I'm referring to is actually based on a hypothetical revision that occurred as late as 1. Since I've got no avenue of being sure about that one way or another, we're all going to have to just pretend that it's not an issue. Let's speak of it no further, eh?
I'd love to think that someday, my King collection will have one of those in it; it's something to hope for, at least. And now, on to the review. The story is a simple one: Curt Garrish, a college student who has just finished his final exams for the semester, goes back to his dorm room, grabs a rifle, and starts shooting people from the window.
That's all there is to it. It is difficult to imagine that a college literary journal would publish this story in 2. Part of me wonders if King has ever been tempted to pull the story from Skeleton Crew in the same way that he has taken Rage (which also deals with a school shooting) out of publication. That's not to say that I'm advocating that King take that action. I'm not; I'm just curious why Rage got the axe and "Cain Rose Up" - - which in some ways is the more disturbing of the two works - - did not.
My best guess would be that nobody has ever had a copy of "Cain Rose Up" found in their locker after shooting a school up. Sadly, the same cannot be said of Rage. Whatever the case might be, "Cain Rose Up" is still available to read for anyone who wishes to purchase a copy of Skeleton Crew, a task that presumably can be performed at virtually any major bookstore (and quite a few minor ones, as well). Personally, I think the story still packs a punch, which is undoubtedly what King intended it to do. I can imagine a lot of people reading the story and being extremely angry about its mere existence. The sort of people who gave King such grief over his (mostly) well- reasoned and logical pro- gun- control essay "Guns," for example, would almost certainly look here and see hypocrisy of the highest order. He's trying to take our guns, they'd shout, and here he is making money off a story about a campus killer! I can sort of see their point. I disagree with it, but I see why they'd make it, and I see why they'd feel they were in the right to do so. What a great many people who advocate for media being held to a higher standard when it comes to not depicting violence seem to fail to take into account is that stories like "Cain Rose Up" serve as acts of empathy. Please note the distinction between empathy and sympathy, which is sometimes confused for empathy but is not at all the same thing.
King's goal in "Cain Rose Up" seems to be to simultaneously show us how difficult it can be to identify a killer like Curt Garrish and how it might theoretically feel to be Curt Garrish. Garrish talks to three different people in the course of this six- page story, and not one of them imagines that he is considering an act of mass murder. They instead just talk to him about everyday trivialities. But why wouldn't they? Garrish doesn't tip them off in any way. Charles Whitman probably didn't, either, when he killed all those people in Texas in 1. What King does is take you inside the mind of Garrish, and show you what it's like at the moment when someone makes the choice to either kill someone or let them live. Consider this chilling passage. A little fella wearing horn- rimmed glasses and a valiantly struggling goatee passed him between four and five, holding a calculus book to his chest like a Bible, his lips moving in a rosary of logarithms. His eyes were blank as blackboards. Garrish paused and looked after him, wondering if he wouldn't be better off dead, but the little fella was now only a bobbing, disappearing shadow on the wall. It bobbed once more and was gone. This is an extremely simple moment, but a very powerful one. What is it in the "little fella" that makes Garrish consider him a potential target? The glasses? The goatee? The calculus book? The blankness in the eyes? Some combination of those factors? Garrish probably does not know any more than we do. Consider for a moment the possibility that as you walk down the street, or up the aisle at a grocery store, or through the corridors of a school, there are eyes sizing you up, making that decision: should I kill this person or let them live? If that thought does not chill you to the bone, then you and I are of different mental and emotional makeups. Now, consider the flip side of the coin: you are the one making that decision. Each person you pass is a potential victim; you hold their life in your hands. Guess what? You do! And odds are, you've used that power wisely. I suspect there are no murderers reading this blog, past or future. But we all - - every single one of us - - has the potential for violence somewhere within us, and we each do with it as we will.
Garrish has a monologue wherein he speaks to a poster of a gun- wielding Humphrey Bogart. Let me tell you something," Garrish told Bogie. "God got mad at Cain because Cain had an idea God was a vegetarian. His brother knew better. God made the world in His image, and if you don't eat the world, the world eats you. So Cain says to his brother, 'Why didn't you tell me?' And his brother says, 'Why didn't you listen?' And Cain says, 'Okay, I'm listening now.' So he waxes his brother and says, 'Hey God! You want meat? Here it is! You want roast or ribs or Abelburgers or what?' And God told him to put on his boogie shoes. So.. This is a horrifying moment, for any number of reasons, but partially because there is at least a kernel of truth to it. If you believe or if you don't, you have to acknowledge that each of us - - either via Cain or via biology - - has been given the potential for homicidal behavior. Most of us exert it every day. You eat a steak, some cow has been murdered so that you can have that privilege. The Smiths were right; meat is murder, and whether directly or indirectly, most people take part in it. Myself included, of course. I had a sausage biscuit for breakfast, composed of who knows what animals; for lunch, I had a turkey sandwich. Dinner hasn't happened yet, but I'm planning on a burger. That'll make three times today that I enjoyed the results of somebody else's murder. The first two times were fairly satisfying; I anticipate that the third will be as well. Now, lest you misunderstand me, I'm not trying to put anyone off eating meat. I applaud vegetarians, and in some ways admire them; but their choice is one I am unwilling to make. If I ever have to start killing my own meat, that might change; but for now, I remain a carnivore. So, no, rest assured, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about their carnivorous nature. If you're capable of eating a beef steak, what else are you willing to do? We all recognize that there is a difference between killing a cow and killing a man. I don't think I could kill a cow personally. Lots of other people can, and presumably they would balk at killing a man; but either way, death is the end result. Either way, a live being becomes a dead one. So if you think you could kill a cow, how much easier does it then become to kill a human?
If we had to kill a cow to have a steak and found that we were capable of doing it, we probably wouldn't feel all that bad about it. And for someone like Curt Garrish, maybe that's how easy the choice to kill the people he kills is. He has been made capable of it; the world is (in his mind) likely to kill him if he doesn't kill it first. So he utters an invocation - - "Good drink, good meat, good God, let's eat!" - - and pulls the trigger. Simple. My point is this: we are not Curt Garrish. For me, the idea of that moment is an utterly alien one. I can imagine it, if I force myself, but it immediately feels foreign and invasive and horrible, and I reject it utterly. And doing that tells me that I'm probably okay, at least insofar as this particular line of inquiry goes. That's what reading "Cain Rose Up" does. It tells us that we're okay; we're not Curt Garrish, or Charles Whitman, or James Holmes. But maybe we'd better be on the lookout for him. Because we aren't him, but somewhere out there, somebody else is. How do we know? Because we've all got the capacity for it, somewhere inside us.
Next time you pass someone on the street, consider: they might be judging your glasses, or your goatee, or the book you're carrying. They'll probably take it no further than that, but.. That's the world we live in, folks. We lived in it in 1. That's horror, and it's why "Cain Rose Up" still works decades later. Be back at some point soon with a look at "Here There Be Tygers," but before I go, some words of horror from Annie Hall via Christopher Walken.